


Sword of the Morning

by catherineflowers



Series: The Hippie and the Hitchhiker [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Boyband Music, Childbirth, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Face-Sitting, Gentle mockery of hippie culture, Mild breath play, Pod is a dog, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy, Vomiting, white person with locs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26173036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: The sequel to my exchange fic "Shade of the Evening".Brienne and Jaime have got themselves in a difficult situation very early in their relationship. After their holiday romance, can they make things work going forward?
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: The Hippie and the Hitchhiker [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900624
Comments: 84
Kudos: 167





	1. The Test

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auntie_social](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auntie_social/gifts).



> Sequel to [Shade of the Evening](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864702/chapters/62844997), which should probably be read first!
> 
> Thanks very much to auntie_social and everyone who requested a sequel. I've had so much fun writing this!

There was a plane to Westeros in three hours. Jaime got a ticket.

He slung some clothes in a bin liner, drove to the airport in his clattering Beetle. Had an argument at the check-in about his bin liner and had to run to a nearby shop to buy himself a carry-on bag. He grabbed the nearest thing, paid for it and rammed his clothes inside.

He got some strange looks as he checked in, and more in the departure lounge later. He was used to people doing double-takes at his locs and his bright clothes, but this felt different. He wondered if they recognised him? He was after all headed for Westeros.

It wasn’t until he was on the plane stuffing the bag into the overhead locker that he saw what he’d bought. On both sides in big, black, unmissable letters, it said “Be Kinder To Your Vagina” and was flanked by two prints of the anatomy in question.

Jaime groaned. Buried it at the back of the locker.

It was, of course, freezing cold in Winterfell, a fact that had somehow slipped Jaime’s mind until he stepped off the plane in his harem pants, t-shirt and sandals. There was actually fucking _snow_. He raced through customs as quickly as he could, trying to keep his arm covering the vagina bag, and found the airport shops.

Luckily, Winterfell airport was well stocked, and there was a shop that no doubt made a killing catering to idiots like him who came in from hot places totally unprepared for the cold weather. Jaime bought himself a duck down coat, a pair of snow boots and several pairs of thick woollen socks. None of the hats would fit over his locs, so he got a scarf to wrap around his head instead.

He hired a car, a mid-size thing in black that looked like something a sensible businessman would drive. A sensible businessman … or a responsible father. A _father_.

A shiver went down Jaime’s spine at the thought. A baby. He’d made a baby with Brienne.

A _child_ , a son or a daughter. Their silly, drunken, post-Shade roll in the sand had created _a human life_. That was absolutely mind-boggling.

He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about it yet, whether he was overjoyed or terrified, sick to his stomach or had butterflies in his belly. All he knew was that he wanted to be with Brienne.

Jaime had only been to Winterfell a handful of times, mostly to play concerts in the dour, foreboding Great Hall, an ancient venue with a proud tradition but few performer commodities. It had been freezing then, too, he remembered. Mostly he’d stayed in his hotel room between recitals. Been chauffeured to rehearsals.

Consequently, he didn’t know his way around. So he took some time fiddling with the sat-nav, putting in the address Brienne had given him when he had booked her tickets for her next visit to Qarth. By the time he set off, it was almost dark. He’d spent all day getting here.

Brienne’s house was small, an old brick terraced house in a narrow street where there was barely any room to park his car. He had to park two streets away and walk back.

Her doorstep was right on the pavement, and he saw lights on inside through the curtains. He banged on the door and waited.

A man opened the door – a pale, thin-faced man in his forties covered in tattoos. He looked Jaime up and down with eyes of ice.

Jaime looked up at the door number, making sure it was Brienne’s.

“Yes?” asked the man.

“Is – is Brienne here?” Jaime stammered.

“No,” said the man. He went to shut the door.

“Where is she?”

“She’s at work.”

“Oh, she’s on a late?” The shopping centre stayed open until 10pm, and it was a little after nine.

“It would appear so.”

“Who – who are you?” Jaime asked. Brienne had never mentioned strange, cold, tattooed men living in her house. He was too young to be her father.

“Who are _you_?” asked the man.

“I’m Jaime. I’m her – her boyfriend.” Was he? Well, he was _something_. Something close enough to be the father of her child, at least.

“The one who jilted her at the altar?”

“No!”

“Oh, the holiday shag?”

“Ye – no. Yes. Look … where is it she works?”

“You’re her boyfriend, and you don’t know where she works?”

“I do but … I don’t live around here. I don’t know Winterfell. Where’s the shopping centre? What’s it called?”

The man sighed, exasperated, even though he had been talking to Jaime for less than a minute. “It’s called the Godswood. Head back to the main road, and you’ll pass it near the roundabout. There’s a big plastic weirwood in the car park, you can’t miss it.”

He shut the door without another word. Before Jaime could even thank him.

Jaime trudged back to his car, huddled in his coat as it started to snow. He was a little puzzled. Just who was that man in Brienne’s house?

Whoever he was, he hadn’t lied. A little way down the main road, Jaime spotted the shopping centre, a huge neon sign in the shape of a weirwood in the car park. He pulled up next to the monstrosity. Got out into the snow.

The Godswood shopping centre, it turned out, was huge. Brightly-lit, cavernous, with hundreds upon hundreds of bland chain shops arranged in three tiers of lights, escalators and advertisements.

Jaime wandered around aimlessly for a while, hoping he would spot Brienne doing her security thing. The shopping centre was quite busy, but not so busy that he thought he would miss a ripped 6’3” blonde with knockout eyes in a uniform.

He quickly realised he was quite wrong. This place was _huge_. Easy to get lost in, too – all the floors, all the shops – they looked the same after a while.

He managed to find the customer service desk, but they wouldn’t call Brienne – something about employee data protection?

Jaime wandered away, starting to despair. What did he have to do to find Brienne? The centre would be closing soon – he’d have to leave, and then he’d have to get back to his car and sit in the freezing car park, hoping to the gods he saw her as she left. Or wait with that weirdo back at her place for her to come home.

Then it struck him. He needed security – he needed to get the attention of security. He briefly considered doing some ostentatious shoplifting, but he didn’t really want to spend the night in a police station.

He looked around – his eyes fell on a nearby bin.

So late in the day, the thing was nearly full, stuffed with wrappers and cups from the nearby food court. Jaime grabbed the rim of it, gave it as hard a shove as he could with his single hand, only to find it was bolted to the floor. He cursed.

Undeterred, he ripped the lid off, threw it to the floor as hard as he could. Pulled out the black sack inside and upended it onto the floor.

The rubbish inside went everywhere. Shoppers around him gasped, pulled their children closer and hurried off. Inside the nearby shops, he saw a couple of employees take notice. Reach for their radios.

He kicked the paper about a bit for a few minutes until …

“Sir?” A man’s voice, coming up the escalators behind him.

Jaime spun to see a gruff, grey-bearded security guard in his late fifties approach, his hands outstretched. Damn – it wasn’t her. He wore a nametag on his breast that read SEAWORTH.

“Sir, what are you doing?” Seaworth asked.

But just as he stepped off the escalator, another head appeared behind him—blonde hair. Bowed head, fiddling with something on her belt.

Brienne.

She stepped off the elevator, huge as ever, dressed in a very unflattering blue uniform that made her look even broader in the hips and shoulders. She looked up. Did a double-take.

“J-Jaime?” she gasped. “ _Jaime_?!”

“Hi, Brienne.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes bugged and her mouth open. She looked around at the mess he’d made with the bin. “What are you _doing_?”

“Oh. Sorry – I’ll clean it up.” Jaime dove to the floor, scrambling around to pick up the trash he’d thrown around. Shoving it back in the bin.

Brienne gaped. Her colleague looked between the two of them.

“You know each other?”

“Yes,” Brienne said. She was in the middle of turning bright red.

“I’m her boyfriend,” Jaime said from the floor.

“Oh!” Seaworth exclaimed. “The one who jilted you at –”

“No!” Brienne and Jaime cried in unison.

“Ah,” said Seaworth with a knowing nod. “The holiday shag.”

“I couldn’t find you,” Jaime explained sheepishly. “I thought if I made a scene, someone would call you.”

“Well, they _did_. What – what are you doing here?”

“You sent me a text. This morning.”

Brienne’s eyes darted nervously to Seaworth. “I was going to call you about that when I finished work.”

“Well, I couldn’t wait. And … I thought it was better to talk about it in person.”

“So, you flew –”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Jaime.”

She looked flustered as all the hells, red in the face and fidgety hands, but a big smile spread across her homely face that Jaime just wanted to kiss.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “I mean … how do you feel?”

Seaworth looked between them, puzzled. But he clicked his radio back onto his belt and nodded. “I’ll head back to the office, Brienne.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

He headed back down the escalator. Brienne got down on the floor beside Jaime, helping him to pick up the trash.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered.

“Nor can I. It’s fucking freezing …”

She looked at his clothes, the brand new coat and boots.

“But how could I _not_?” Jaime continued. “Brienne, you’re … you’re …”

“I know,” she whispered. Looking down at the trash she was collecting.

“How … how do you feel?”

“Okay. A bit tired I suppose, a little bit green when I smell coffee, but –”

“I mean, how do you feel about being … you know.”

The line between Brienne’s brows grew deeper. “That’s … I … that’s probably not something we should talk about here.”

Jaime reached for her hand as she picked up a paper coffee cup. Squeezed it. “Of course. You’re right.”

“I finish work soon. Like … twenty minutes. You’re sticking around tonight, not – not flying back?”

“Yes. No. I was planning on staying.”

“Good. Then let’s … let’s go to my house? Get some food, talk?”

Jaime nodded, putting the last of the rubbish he’d thrown back into the bin. “Sounds good.”

Brienne dithered. “Do you … did you book a hotel?”

“No. I – I just got the first flight. I didn’t think much beyond that.”

“Well, you can always …” She bit her lip. “… stay with me?”

Jaime nodded eagerly. “I was hoping I could.”

She smiled. Squeezed his hand, too.

“Oh,” Jaime said. “Who is that man in your house?”

“Who, Roose?”

“He didn’t tell me his name. Fiftyish, l think? Covered in tattoos?”

“Yes, that’s Roose. He’s my lodger.”

“You have a lodger?”

“Well, I can’t afford the mortgage on my own so …”

“So you took in a fifty-year-old man?”

She shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago. He was the best candidate. He’s divorced, got his own business …”

“His own business? What does he do?”

“He’s a tattooist. A ‘skin artist’ as he likes to call it.”

Jaime scoffed.

“He’s quiet and reliable. Keeps himself to himself, mostly. He even takes Podrick out for walks – he’s nice enough.”

“He seemed a bit weird.”

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers,” she said with a shrug. “I didn’t want to lose the house, I put my inheritance from my mother into it.”

“He looked like the type to have a glass to the wall when we’re … you know.”

“We’d better be quiet, then, hadn’t we?”

Jaime grunted – he didn’t like being quiet, and he _certainly_ didn’t like the thought of Brienne being quiet.

“Look, I have to get back to work,” she said, still looking at him as though she couldn’t quite believe he was here. “Wait for me, yes?”

“Of course. I’m parked out by the big plastic tree.”

Brienne laughed. She dithered for a moment and then leaned down to peck a swift kiss on his cheek. “I’ll see you there.”

Jaime watched her go back down the escalator, his heart full to bursting with so many feelings. He loved the way she looked in her horrible, frumpy uniform, her hair brushed back neatly and her freckly, muscled arms on display.

He wandered about for a bit with a smile on his face, then bought himself a giant hot chocolate from the food court and took it outside to keep himself warm in his car while he waited. It had been _years_ since he’d had hot chocolate – it just wasn’t something that he’d thought of while living in a desert country like Qarth.

It was _amazing_ , though. Warm and sweet and comforting. So good that Jaime was completely distracted and jumped out of his skin when Brienne rapped on the car window.

“Oh, sorry,” Brienne said when she saw the hot chocolate spill down his coat.

“Fuck. Sorry – I was miles away.”

She slid into the passenger seat. Helped him dab at the spill with a napkin.

“Come here,” he whispered, not giving a fuck about the coat, just wanting to kiss her more than he wanted anything in his life.

Gods, she was even sweeter than the hot chocolate – he all but melted in her arms. Jaime found himself quite relieved – despite the fact they had spoken almost every day since she had left Qarth, he had been worried it wouldn’t be the same if they saw each other again. Especially in this frozen hellhole.

“Do you want to get some food?” she asked after a thorough kiss. “I’m starving.”

Jaime resisted the joke that she was eating for two. Probably not the most sensitive thing to say right now. “Sure. You want to grab a Dornish or something?”

“Sounds good. There’s a good one around the corner from my house.”

“You want to lead?” he asked. “Where’s your car?” He remembered her mention that she drove a big battered 4x4.

“I sold it,” she said. “Cheaper to take the bus.”

“Oh. So … give me directions then?”

She pulled her seatbelt on, and they set off, Jaime once again marvelling at how much easier driving was in Westeros than it was in Qarth. Driving on the left meant he was on the other side of the car here, and didn’t have to keep leaning over himself to change gear with his single hand.

Night was nowhere near so beautiful in Westeros as it was in Qarth, Jaime thought as they drove away from the Godswood shopping centre. The sky was choked with clouds, the stars rendered invisible by all the light pollution. He had quite forgotten.

Everyone was huddled into coats and hats, heads down, the shape of them barely human. Whenever Jaime did see a face, it was always grimaced against the bitter cold. No one looked happy here. No one looked carefree.

They picked up some food and took it back to Brienne’s little terraced house, going through the narrow door that led straight from the street into the living room.

Brienne had two old sofas in her living room, covered with nice throws, a coffee table and a small TV. The carpet was one of those horrifically patterned ones that Jaime had only ever seen in houses belonging to the elderly. The wallpaper wasn’t much better.

“Excuse the décor,” she mumbled. Picking up some mugs and a crisp packet from the coffee table and whisking them away. “Ronnet and I were going to redo it all after we got married.”

“It’s fine,” Jaime said. “It’s a nice house.”

In truth, it was a shoebox. He doubted Brienne could even lay down in this room without her head and feet touching the walls.

She took his coat and turned up the thermostat when she saw him in his t-shirt, then raised an eyebrow when she saw the bag he’d bought in the airport.

“’Be Kinder to Your Vagina’?” she asked.

Jaime shook his head and grinned. “Always good advice, right?”

Podrick bounded in, wagging his tail excitedly to see Jaime, running between him and Brienne and getting in the way everywhere he went. Jaime ruffled the Leonberger’s ears and flopped onto the nearest sofa.

Brienne ran around doing more of her emergency tidy, clearing away some discarded socks, an apple core and some battered gym shoes. She disappeared from the room and returned a moment later with some mismatched plates and some cutlery. Unpacked the takeaway bag on the table and sat on the other sofa. Podrick sniffed around excitedly until he was ordered to his bed in the corner.

The food was good, rich and well-spiced with dragon peppers, just the way Jaime liked a Dornish. They ate in near silence, though—the thing they were meant to be talking about hung heavy between them.

Finally, Jaime could stand it no longer. “So,” he said, putting his empty plate on the table. “We had a little accident.”

Brienne swallowed her grilled snake. Put down her cutlery. “Yes.”

Jaime took a deep breath.

“I haven’t slept with anyone else,” Brienne said. “You’re definitely the father.”

“Oh,” Jaime said. That hadn’t actually occurred to him. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Look, I … I know I’m just a – a holiday shag, but I – I meant what I said. About my feelings. That wasn’t bullshit.”

“Your feelings …”

“That I fell in love with you.”

“Jaime …”

“I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. We don’t know each other well, it’s probably lust or infatuation … I know all of that. But … I do. I love you.”

Brienne looked down, and for a moment, Jaime thought she was trying to think of a way to let him down gently. But a soft smile crept over her face. “I know you do.” She bit her lip. “I love you, too.”

They smiled at each other, long and sweet and soppy. Gods, they were a pair of saps.

“A baby is complicated, though,” Brienne said. “Much _more_ complicated.”

“Yes, it is.”

They fell silent for a long moment.

“So … are you keeping it?”

Brienne looked up at him quite sharply.

“I mean … is that what you want? Is that how you feel? I mean, I … oh, seven fucking hells, I don’t know the right way to ask that question.” Jaime took a breath. “It’s your choice. Obviously. I’m not putting pressure on you either way.”

Brienne sighed. “I shouldn’t. Having a baby by a man I met on holiday … we live in different countries, we’re not even properly together. What would I do about work? And … I’m not exactly financially solvent right now, thanks to Ronnet. I can’t really afford this house or even a car …”

“Brienne, you know I have money. You know I’d never …”

“Yes but … we don’t know each other. I’m not trying to be cold, but I can’t make this decision based on input from someone really I don’t know. I don’t think you’d disappear, but … it’s not … _sensible_ to ignore the worst-case scenario.”

“We could do it legally. Properly. I’d sign anything you want. Not that I’m influencing – just, please … money is not a factor. It shouldn’t be.”

She smiled again, but it was a tight, worried smile. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all day. Obviously. I know what I _should_ do, but …”

“But?”

“But I’m thirty-four. I’m thirty-four, and I’ve only slept with three men, including you.”

“Oh.” Jaime closed his mouth. She’d actually slept with more people than he had, but somehow it didn’t feel like the right time to mention that.

“What are my chances, _really_ , of meeting someone, falling in love, getting married, feeling like the time is right?”

“I – I don’t know …”

“And I would like to have a child. I can’t deny that.”

“So …”

Brienne chewed her bottom lip. “So, it’s not the right time, and I don’t know if you’re the right man, but …”

“But … I’m going to be a dad?”

“How do you feel about that?”

Jaime sat back in the chair. Scratched his locs. “Overwhelmed,” he said. “A bit scared.”

“Yeah, I …”

“But … I can’t wait to meet our child.”

“Really?!”

“Really. I … the opportunity has never come up before, but … I always wanted kids. Someday.”

“Me too.”

“Look,” he blurted. “Do you want to get married or something?”

“M-married?”

“You know, if it’s important to you, or if it will make things easier legally?”

“Legally?” She seemed only able to stammer echoes of what he was saying.

“And, you know, because we’re in love. People have married for stupider reasons than that.” He grinned. "I did!"

Brienne gaped like a fish. She didn't seem able to say anything, now.

“Seems like if we’re having a baby, then … well, the biggest commitment is already made, right?”

She took a couple of deep breaths. Wiped her top lip with the back of her hand as if it had suddenly begun to sweat. “Jaime …” she said.

“It’s okay. It was just an idea …”

“It’s a good idea. It is. I get it. Making a family, making things right, wanting to show me you’re committed …”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“We can’t control that we’re having a baby. Not _now_ , anyway.” She reached across the sofas and took his hand. “But … _us_? I’d like to think we still have some control over us. We don’t have to rush it, do we?”

“Oh.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s not that I’m saying ‘no’. But we have a big journey ahead of us, and I was looking forward to seeing how we navigate it. Rushing into marriage, getting ahead of ourselves like that … I’m worried it might spoil what we’ve found. I want to enjoy it the way it should be enjoyed, without putting pressure on ourselves to make a marriage of it so soon.”

Jaime managed a smile. “Sure.”

Brienne slid off her sofa and knelt in front of his. Reached up to pull his face down to hers and kissed him, hard. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I am … I’m so flattered that you asked, and … lucky, too.”

“I love you,” he told her, catching her lips in his own all over again.

“Come to bed with me?” she whispered when they broke apart.

He raised an eyebrow at her in feigned shock.

“I’ve really missed you, and the phone sex just isn’t enough.”

Jaime laughed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

They stood, and kissed again. Kissed some more. Humming into each other’s mouths, hands and a stump sliding under clothes as things got more heated.

He dipped his head to undo two buttons on her shirt with the assistance of his teeth. She palmed his cock through his harem pants.

“Mmm, you smell like Qarth,” she moaned.

“You smell good enough to eat. And I plan to.”

She gave a dark, throaty chuckle, and took his hand to lead him from the room.

In the next room, sat at the dining table playing cards, was Roose. Another man sat with him, a grinning kid in his early twenties with a mop of black curls. He too was covered in tattoos. Roose looked up, but his expression didn’t change.

“We’re turning in,” Brienne said breezily. Her thumb ran back and forth across Jaime’s knuckles, which felt like the sexiest, most exciting thing in the world right now. It actually made his cock throb.

Roose looked vaguely nauseous, but nodded. His companion grinned some more.

“Who’s the other guy?” Jaime whispered as he followed Brienne up the narrow, garishly-carpeted staircase.

Brienne shrugged. “I think it’s his son?”

Brienne’s bedroom, like the rest of her house, was small and cramped, her bed an old divan with a dimpled velvet headboard. It was also freezing cold – the windows were a little warped and let the breeze in even through her thick curtains.

She disappeared off to the bathroom to get ready for bed, leaving Jaime to strip alone in her bedroom. He usually slept naked in Qarth and hadn’t thought for a moment he would need to wear anything here. But gods, it was _freezing_. He had goose-pimples even indoors!

He dove for her bed and buried his shivering body under her thick duvet. It was soft and blue and smelled of Brienne. Gods, he couldn’t wait to fuck Brienne.

She came back after a moment wearing an oversized grey t-shirt and her spotted cotton knickers. She had an excited smile on her face as she turned on the lamp and turned off the overhead light. Jaime’s hand went to his cock beneath the duvet, fondled it to the sight of her huge bare legs.

“I can’t believe you’re here in my bed,” she said. “You don’t know how many times I’ve wished you were.”

She slid around the bed to get to the chest of drawers beside Jaime, where a little pink boom box covered with stickers sat. She jammed a CD in the tray and pressed play. Turned it up loud enough to cover the inevitable sex sounds.

“Now you can make me scream,” she told him. Her hand went between her legs, too. Stroking herself through her knickers. For a moment they just watched each other. Masturbating to each other masturbating.

Jaime lifted the duvet, and Brienne climbed beneath it, straddling his hips to sit atop him. Grinning as she ground against his stupidly hard cock.

She was deliciously warm, so he pulled her down over him, dragging the duvet up to their necks. They giggled and kissed, and she tasted like toothpaste and felt so wonderfully strong on top of him, so wonderfully _Brienne_. Jaime wrestled with the urge to rip those demure cotton knickers off her, to beg her to pin him down and swallow his cock in the wet heat of her cunt. Grip him with her thighs and stick her tongue down his throat and keep him pinned while he nutted helplessly inside her.

Instead, he was pulled out of his fevered fantasy by the caterwauling coming from her ancient CD player.

“What is this music?” he asked as she pressed kisses to his throat.

“What?” she panted. Still grinding against Jaime’s cock – he could feel how wet she was through her knickers.

He groped up onto the chest of drawers to find the CD cover she’d put down. Pulled it over into his eyeline.

On the front were two very pretty boys in soft focus, posing in identical white jackets, all simpering faces and tousled curls. He recognised them at once.

“The _Stormboys_?” he asked.

Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell – they had been _huge_ about twenty years ago, right when Brienne would have been a teenager. Two twats singing in falsetto that girls went wild for.

“Seriously?” he asked. “The Stormboys?”

Brienne sat up, red and panting with arousal. “Shut up,” she said. “I like them.”

Jaime, of course, did not shut up. “What track’s your favourite?” he asked, flipping the CD cover so he could read the list on the back. “Oooh … Summer Peach?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Colour Me Rose? The Sun Has Set (No Candle Can Replace You)?”

Brienne ripped the CD cover from his hand and slammed it back on top of the chest of drawers. Pulled her t-shirt off over her head, clearly hoping that her _very_ pink nipples would be enough of a distraction from her musical tastes.

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Jaime groaned. He sat up beneath her to wrap his arms around all that warm skin, nuzzle at her breasts with lips and teeth and tongue.

She cradled his head to her chest just as the autotuned voice of Renly Baratheon hit a particularly high note and held it for four eyewatering bars.

“Oh, baby! You think you can get my voice that high?” Jaime panted.

“Shut _up_!”

She wriggled up on her knees and pulled her knickers off one leg at a time. Jaime hooked his arms around her arse to pull her cunt to his mouth. Just as he was about to devour her, Renly and Loras decided they were going to try and harmonise. Jaime winced.

“Gods, did you hear that vocal strain? I bet they don’t sing much these days! Probably fucked their voices.”

“Oh, for the love of the gods!” Brienne exclaimed. She leaned over him to grab the headboard, a gleam in her eye that was positively _murderous._ Jaime opened his mouth to point out some more musical atrocities, only to have it immediately filled by Brienne’s very warm, very wet cunt. “Shut up and eat me out,” she growled.

Jaime chuckled into the depths of her sex and proceeded to do as he was told. It was much better now – warm and soft and wet and welcoming. Protected from the musical purgatory that was The Stormboys by Brienne’s big strong legs stopping up his ears.

He took his time at eating her, partly just to be a defiant shit, but mostly because he’d missed her a lot and he wanted to savour every last lick. He teased her – building her up to the whimpering, desperate edge and then lifting his mouth away to place tender kisses on her freckled inner thighs. Chuckling at her whining and pleading. Again and again and again.

“I love you,” he told her after what must have been the twentieth time he had denied her an orgasm. He kissed his way back to the engorged sweetness of her clit. Murmuring softly as he licked into her pubic hair.

She had a hand fisted in his locs at the scalp, holding his head against her. Grinding herself against him in shuddering surges. He wrapped both arms about her waist, hand and stump on her arse cheeks. Held her hard against his mouth as he licked and licked and licked.

“Please don’t stop … please don’t stop … please don’t stop …” She pleaded, again and again, sounding so desperate that this time he had mercy and didn’t stop when he felt her get close. He knew her body so well – felt the tension in her legs, the ragged tremble in every thrust of her hips. He listened to her cries build and build and build, knew to keep the rhythm exactly the same until …

Brienne gave a wild, choked cry, tipping her head back on her shoulders and squeezing his head between her thighs so hard he thought he might suffocate. Or orgasm, one of the two. She shuddered atop him, and shuddered again. Twisted his locs with her fingers and shuddered some more. He lapped and kissed her softly, so in love with every part of her.

“Love you too,” she moaned as she slithered off his face to flop onto the mattress beside him. “ _Gods_ , Jaime, you make me feel so good.”

Jaime grinned, propping himself up on an elbow and rolling his head on his shoulders to make sure she hadn’t cricked his neck or anything. Brienne sprawled on the pillows looking like steamrolled shit – red in the face, hair sticking up, absolutely blown away.

She looked beautiful. Jaime loved her more than he had ever loved anyone in his life.

In hindsight, it was so obvious that Lysa had faked her orgasms right from the start of their relationship. She had never looked as Brienne looked now, shattered and stunned and satisfied as fuck. He’d been so stupid - why in the world had he ever thought it possible that Lysa could come in less than a minute? Had he thought he was _that_ good?

Jaime and his ex-wife had never had any of _this_ , no fun together, no teasing each other, no learning each other’s bodies. No genuine excitement at the other’s pleasure. Not ever. It had always been a transaction, something they had to get through before they could get back to their separate lives.

Now, Brienne hummed happily and reached for Jaime. She pulled him out of his thoughts and on top of her in a bundle of duvet and languid arms and legs. “Inside me,” she moaned, and he moaned too as he slid his cock into her in one long, smooth stroke.

Gods it was beautiful. So beautiful. Jaime didn’t ever want to stop.

The bed creaked, Brienne sighed. On the CD player, The Stormboys belted out a heartfelt ballad – the perfect song to make love to. Jaime was lost in Brienne’s eyes, drowning in her kiss. He felt like crying – it was all so … so …

The emotion overwhelmed him; one moment they rocked together gently and the next he was surging into her, toes curling and her hands holding his hand and his stump while he buried his face in her neck. Her ankles were crossed on his arse, and her heart thudded hard against his as he thrust and thrust and _thrust_.

Jaime came. Choking, crying, cursing, bursting. Crushing her against him. Feeling like the whole of him was inside her, feeling full and well and good and right.

Afterwards, he lay wrapped around her, buried up to his neck in duvet; soft, warm, sleepy. Happy. Brienne had both hands cupped about his stump – Jaime had his arm around her, stroking her back.

She dozed while he watched, her eyelids getting heavier and heavier every time she blinked.

Jaime watched her and he thought of Lysa. He had never done _this_ with Lysa, either. Never held her as she fell asleep, never wanted to gaze at her, have time stop so he could be in her arms forever.

No wonder Lysa had been unfaithful. If this … even a fraction of _this_ was what she had found with Baelish the conductor, if she had found this warm, fulfilling, gentle kind of _peace_ … then how could Jaime be angry with her? He would have done anything to keep feeling the way he was feeling right now.

Brienne was asleep with a smile on her face.

Jaime smiled, too. They had so much more to look forward to. They had _life_.

“Thank you, Brienne,” he whispered. So quiet he couldn’t even hear himself over Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell. “Thank you for letting me be a dad.”


	2. The Arrangements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is eight weeks pregnant and it's not going well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An extra warning on this chapter for graphic depiction of early pregnancy, and consequently, some descriptions of vomiting that might be a little much for emetophobes. Sorry about that!

Jaime woke to the sound of vomiting.

Brienne hung over the side of the bed, her head disappearing into the bucket she had for this purpose, bringing up what looked like strings of orange bile. It was 6am.

She groaned. Collapsed back onto the pillows and tried to bring herself to eat a ginger biscuit. Jaime passed her a glass of water.

“Again?” he asked, somewhat superfluously.

“I’m fucking sick of this,” she replied.

Brienne threw up every day. She threw up when she woke up, and before she went to bed. She threw up if she had an empty stomach, or if she ate something too fatty or rich, or if she smelled coffee or cigarette smoke. Certain soaps triggered it, too, as did washing powder or strong perfume.

She threw up if the car went over too many bumps, if Jaime took a corner too wide. If he had to brake suddenly or if she smelled exhaust fumes.

She was useless at her job right now – Davos Seaworth had her parked in front of the monitors most of the day in the security office, a stone’s throw from the toilets, with a waste paper bin at her feet just in case she didn’t even make it _that_ far. Even when she wasn’t throwing up, she was nauseous.

She’d tried everything. Seasickness bands on her wrists. Homoeopathic sprays. Eating before she got out of bed. Ginger tea, ginger biscuits, raw ginger. So much ginger.

Brienne was pale and green and exhausted. Quiet and sullen and irritable all of the time. Not at all herself.

Jaime hadn’t gone home. How could he? Brienne crawled out of bed, he drove her to work, she sat there all day and then came home exhausted. He didn’t have a clue how she would manage by herself – all her washing and cooking and shopping – if he wasn’t there. He’d had to help her wash her hair in the shower the other night because she was just so drained.

Today, thankfully, was her day off. Today at least she could rest, and he could look after her.

“You want some breakfast?” he asked after she sipped some of the water.

She nodded. One of the weird things was that even though she felt sick all the time, she was also _ravenous_.

“I’ll make you some eggs,” he told her, putting a kiss on her forehead even though she smelled like sweat and sick.

“Thank you,” she said, closing her eyes. “Can you open a window, too?”

Jaime almost protested – it was well below freezing outside. But poor Brienne had terrible hot flushes thanks to her pregnancy hormones; he’d lost count of the times he’d put an arm around her to find her burning up.

He opened the window and kissed her again, feeling desperately sorry for her in this state. It wasn’t much better the rest of the day, but mornings were always the worst.

He borrowed a pair of her pyjamas and slung a robe over his shoulders, a very fetching leopard-print one. Really not his style, but since bloody Roose had complained to Brienne about Jaime walking about the house naked, now it was _pyjamas_.

He took her sick bucket downstairs and trudged outside in the snow to wash it out at the tap in her postage stamp of a back garden. Of course, yet again, the pipes were frozen, so he had to use another bucket to clean the first one, trudging back and forth to the kitchen while he did it, and then tip the lot down the drain.

He took the fresh bucket upstairs just in time for Brienne to puke in it again, meaning he had to repeat the process.

He made her eggs, fluffed her pillows, helped her shower and get dressed. Held her hair back while she vomited more of that orange bile. Fed Podrick and stuck a basket of darks in to wash. He helped Brienne make her way downstairs into the living room and sat to watch a terrible early morning cooking show with her.

“Better now you’ve eaten?” he asked, noticing she didn’t look quite so deathly grey. He rubbed her back while she sat. Her neck and shoulder, too.

Brienne sighed and relaxed into his kneading. “Today is eight weeks and three days,” she told him. “Four weeks and this should get better.”

She said that every day, more than once. It’s what everyone told her – the worst of it was over at the twelve-week mark. That eight weeks was apparently the worst part. The most hormones.

She clung onto it like a life-raft.

He picked her hand up and placed it on her belly, as yet completely flat. “It’ll be worth it.” He told her _that_ every day, as well. “Just think how it will be the first time we hold him.”

“Him? You think it’s a boy?”

He grinned and kissed her. “I _know_ it is.”

Brienne laughed.

“I’m not kidding. I know.”

“How?”

“I saw him! During my very first shade trip, back in Qarth. I didn’t understand at the time, but it all makes sense now.”

“Really? What happened?”

“I was still struggling at the time. I couldn’t get over losing my hand, or Lysa leaving me, or the fact I couldn’t play the violin for shit any more. My first trip was like a nightmare, people yelling at me, things falling on me, walls closing in – really wild and disjointed.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. So in the middle of all this, there was this kid. Maybe about five years old? He looked like me, so I thought it was my childhood self, you know – my inner child and all that. But he had the bluest eyes you ever saw, and he had a cute little freckled nose.”

“Like –”

“Like yours. Your eyes, your nose. Your freckles.” He reached out and booped her nose. “I’m telling you, that kid was ours.”

“So what did he do in this vision?”

“He calmed me down. Held my hand and got me through it. That trip was as weird as fuck, but it helped me sort out what I was going through at the time. Made me stay in Qarth, made me choose the lifestyle. And that was our boy.”

“Well, you’ve got a fifty per cent chance of being right, I guess.”

Jaime shook his head. “I’m telling you. It’s a boy: blue eyes, freckled nose. You’ll see.”

Brienne laughed again. “Don’t suppose he told you what his name was?”

“No, nothing like that. Don’t think he even spoke.”

“A son,” she nodded. “A son would be nice.”

“Yeah. Are you … are you thinking about names, then?”

She had a soft little smile. “A little bit. I have a name for a girl, but no boys’ ones yet.”

Jaime sat up. “Tell me.”

Her smile grew. “Well, if it’s a girl, I’d like to name her after my mother.”

“What was her name?” Brienne’s mother had died when she was young, Jaime knew, but he didn’t know anything else about her.

“She was Ariella, but … everyone called her Ella. I was thinking Ella?”

“Ella … that’s nice. Sophisticated. I like it.”

Brienne nodded. “What about you? Do you … do you have any ideas?”

“Me? For names?”

“Well, you are the baby’s dad.”

“Yeah, but …”

“But what?”

Jaime shrugged. “It’s not like _that_. We’re not – not that kind of couple, not yet, at least. We did say we’d do things slowly.”

Brienne sighed. “I know, but … gods, you’ve been here almost a month. You cook my meals and wash my clothes. You clean out my sick bucket every five minutes. I think we’re a little bit beyond taking it slow.”

She was probably right. Other than work, they hadn’t left each other’s side for weeks now. They were all but living together.

“I mean, I know sex has been off the cards lately …”

“I don’t mind,” he said hurriedly. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of when she’d sworn blind she felt okay enough to do it. After a few minutes of jiggling around on top of him, she’d puked in his locs.

“I know, but … this really isn’t how I thought this would go.”

“That’s not your fault.”

She shook her head. “How typical that the one time my body decides to so something womanly, it almost kills me.”

“Four more weeks,” he told her again. “Then you’ll start to feel a bit more human.”

“Gods, I hope so.”

She looked as though she might be about to cry again – honestly, she cried at _everything_ right now – so Jaime swiftly redirected. “So, you don’t have any ideas at all for a boy’s name?”

She shook her head. “Nothing I like. Do you?”

“Hmmm … what about something beautiful like Comet or Treetops, or …”

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to give birth to a human, Jaime, and not an elf.”

He laughed. “You don’t like those?”

“I think school would be difficult for a Comet Lannister, don’t you?”

Jaime blinked. “L-Lannister?”

“Oh. I assumed –”

“No. You don’t want to call it Lannister.”

Brienne went a deep shade of red. Dropped her eyes. “Of course. I should have asked, I’m sorry.”

“It – it’s not that –”

“No, it was just tradition. I didn’t think further than that. It would be awkward for you, I get that.”

“Not for me –”

“O’Tarth is fine. Really.”

They fell into silence, Jaime’s guts in a knot. How could he explain it to her? How could he make her understand? “I love you,” he said, instead.

Brienne didn’t respond.

Just then, Podrick came padding in, trying to climb onto Brienne’s lap and then making a nuisance of himself wagging his tail and running back and forth to the front door.

“He needs a walk,” Brienne groaned.

“I’ll take him,” Jaime offered. “You need to rest.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course. You don’t want to be out there puking into bins in all this snow anyway. It’s slippery. You need to keep yourself dry and warm and safe.”

She smiled, but still, she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Can I borrow some more jeans?” he asked. Wet, cold harem pants were not a nice thing, he’d discovered.

“Of course.”

He went upstairs in silence, threw her pyjamas off and dug around in her drawers for jeans. Most of them were in the washing machine, but he found a pair of dark denim jeggings at least. He borrowed a pair of her knickers, too – nothing too fancy, but some cotton shorts that would at least stop his tackle from getting pinched by the jeggings as he walked.

He nicked a jumper, too, a red overhead hoodie, and a pair of her socks. He really needed to get to a shop and buy himself some more clothes for this weather, but somehow ….

He caught sight of himself in the mirror on the back of her wardrobe door. He didn’t recognise himself dressed like this – though perhaps the problem was that he _did_. Save for the locs, he looked uncomfortably like himself, uncomfortably like Jaime fucking Lannister.

He didn’t want that.

It would only take one popular-classical-loving retiree to recognise him walking that massive dog, and he was fucked. Then it would be paparazzi, articles about how far he’d fallen, journalists hounding him, hounding Brienne and then their baby. It would be Lysa reading it all over breakfast with her conductor and pissing herself laughing at his locs and pitying him for being _here_.

Here. In fucking Winterfell of all places.

He spotted a pair of aviators on Brienne’s chest of drawers and put them on.

“I don’t think you’ll need the sunglasses,” Brienne said from her armchair as he clipped Podrick’s lead to his collar. She was wrapped in a blanket now, her laptop on her knees. She was upset still; he could tell. She always busied herself with things when she was upset.

“It’s the glare on the snow,” Jaime lied. “Gives me a headache after a while.”

Brienne nodded, but she didn’t look up. She’d loaded her game, the one where she was a big knight in plate armour—the one where she’d met Ronnet Connington, although apparently, he didn’t play any more.

Podrick scratched at the door. Jaime hovered. Brienne fought a bear.

“See you in a bit,” he said.

“Mmm,” she said. Looking at her screen.

Jaime wrapped a scarf around his face and left the house.

Outside, it was snowing thick and hard, which excited Podrick. He barked and jumped around in it, leaving huge pawprints, then shaking the flakes off his fur.

Jaime headed through the narrow streets of the estate, grateful that the snow meant there were few people about, and even fewer paying attention to him. Podrick always drew stares of course, but in a way that was kind of distracting. They weren’t looking at him if they were looking at the dog.

He walked Podrick three times around the local park, dodging the kids throwing snowballs, keeping his head down as he passed their parents. Just in case.

Despite the laughter of the playing kids and Podrick’s waggy-tailed excitement, everything was miserable here. The sky was the same colour from sunrise to sundown, he was nothing but cold, and the best he had to look forward to was four more weeks of cleaning up Brienne’s vomit.

He felt like a shit for even thinking that.

Brienne’s morning sickness was no one’s fault, and of course, it wasn’t in the slightest bit fair that she was the one enduring it to bring their child into the world. She hated needing his help, and he didn’t mind giving it, not one bit.

It was just that he missed home. Missed the sunshine, missed the warmth, missed the simple house he’d built with his own one hand. He missed the sun on his body, the sand between his toes. The lack of anything to worry about.

Everything here was hard, and grim. Leaving the house was an ordeal of coats and boots and hats and scarves. That gnawing fear that someone would recognise him.

You could barely swing a cat in Brienne’s house, and they practically lived on top of Roose bloody Bolton. Even when Brienne had felt well enough for them to still be having sex every night, they’d had to fret about every squeak of her bed in case it disturbed him.

Roose had complained to Brienne about them laughing too much, about Jaime closing doors too loudly. He’d moaned about Brienne playing music to try to cover up their sex sounds, then he’d moaned about the sex sounds, too. He’d actually walked into her bedroom at midnight while they were 69ing to tell them to shut up.

Brienne had bought a bolt for her door the next day.

There was nothing _free_ about being here, and Jaime desperately wanted to be free. He wanted food and drink and sex and fun – he wanted to be able to walk around naked in his girlfriend’s house, to eat whatever he wanted from the fridge, to moan when he had an orgasm and to beg Brienne to squeeze his head with her thighs while she did.

So he could barely suppress a groan when, as he was coming out of the park, he spotted a beaten-up black van coming in his direction. Along its side was a hand-painted logo that read “Dreadfort Skin Art” alongside a spreadeagled human figure covered in tattoos.

The van drew to a stop beside him. The blacked-out window wound down.

“Get in,” said Roose Bolton. He was pale, his eyes paler.

“I’m walking the dog,” Jaime told him.

“Put him in the back.”

“Why?”

But Roose had jumped out of the cab and was walking to the back of the van. He flung the doors open and called to Podrick.

Traitor that he was, Pod jumped straight in, almost pulling Jaime’s arm out of its socket as he did. He padded around in there, lay down on the filthy mattress Roose had in the back. Jaime looked at the other man with alarm.

“Are you a serial killer or something?”

Roose let out a short scoff and slammed the doors. Jaime trudged around to get into the passenger seat. There was no seatbelt on that side, but Roose took off before he could say anything, gunning the van far too fast on these narrow, icy streets.

“Where are we going?” Jaime asked.

“I have an errand to run. You’re going to help me.”

“What errand?”

“A fridge,” said Roose. “It’s at my shop, and you’re going to help me get it home.”

“You want me to help you lug a fridge about?”

“Yes. Since, apparently, I can’t leave so much as a pint of milk in the one we already have without _you_ drinking it, I’ve decided to get my own.”

“Uh, you are aware I only have one hand, right?” Jaime held up the empty wrist of his right sleeve. “I’m not much good at moving furniture.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Roose. But he kept driving. “What happened to you? Were you in the army or something? In a war?”

“Earthquake,” Jaime told him.

Roose grunted. “Don’t you have a prosthetic?”

“Yeah. In Qarth. I don’t wear it much, it’s too hot over there, I got out of the habit.”

Roose fell silent. In the back, Podrick started to snore. He was stretched out on that disgusting mattress, his legs twitching like he was running in his sleep.

After a few more miles, they pulled up at a little residential shopping centre – a corner shop, a Dornish takeaway, a sunbed place and Dreadfort Skin Art.

Roose got out of the van and looked expectantly at Jaime.

“What about Podrick?”

“He’s asleep, isn’t he?”

Jaime knew you weren’t supposed to let dogs stay in cars, but … was that only in hot weather? He had no clue, he’d always been more of a cat person. “Just for a minute then.”

Roose locked the van and led Jaime into his shop.

Inside, the place was nice. Red leather couches, a big black reception desk. Artwork all over the walls. A spiral staircase that led up to the studios themselves. Upstairs, Jaime could hear the buzzing of needles and someone singing softly. They had a nice voice.

The receptionist looked him up and down – he was a short man with a curly goatee who had slightly deranged eyes. “You have an appointment?” he asked.

“He’s with me, Locke,” Roose said in a chilly tone.

“Oh,” said the man. Locke. He looked Jaime up and down again, a spark of recognition in his eyes. “You’re the pretty boy, aren’t you?”

“I’m what?” Jaime looked around for Roose, but he’d disappeared. Gone, completely, like he’d vanished in a puff of smoke.

“I hear that big bitch makes you scream,” Locke said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“ _What_?!” Jaime gasped. He spun back to Locke, horrified.

“Drives Roose _mad_ , you two. First with all the fucking and now with all the spewing. It’s all we’ve heard about this past moon.”

“I – oh. Well, we …”

“You want some coffee, pretty boy? Can’t promise it won’t taste like horse piss.”

“I’ll pass.”

Just then, the singing woman made her way down the stairs, still in full voice. She was a well-rounded woman of maybe thirty, with dyed black hair and bright red lipstick. She too had full sleeves of tattoo protruding from her leather waistcoat: cute, colourful ones of cupcakes and cartoon unicorns. Behind her was a client, a skinny boy with a dressing on one arm, freshly applied. He looked a little pale as he slipped into a denim jacket. A little shellshocked.

He passed a handful of cash to Locke with a shuddering hand and departed into the snow.

The woman smiled to see Jaime. “Are you my 11 o’clock, darling?”

“Your 11 o’clock cancelled,” Locke told her. “This is Brienne’s pretty boy.”

“Ooh!” She raised a beautifully-shaped eyebrow. “Roose was _not_ wrong, you _are_ a pretty boy!”

“Be careful, Walda,” Locke grinned. “He likes big girls.”

She chuckled. “So I’ve heard.”

Jaime fidgeted. Tried to grin, but this felt like more than a bit of gentle teasing.

“So you want to come upstairs with me?” Walda purred. “Since my man cancelled on me? I could give you some _very_ good ink.”

Jaime laughed nervously. He looked around, desperately hoping Roose would appear as suddenly as he’d vanished.

“What’s the matter, pretty boy?” asked Locke. “Not had any ink before?”

“Actually, no.”

“No?” Walda gaped. “You surprise me – you with those locs. I would have thought you had a fair bit of art on that golden skin.”

“None at all.”

“Maybe you should change that?” Locke suggested. “We hear all about how much you like to walk around in the buff. At least we know you’ll show it off!”

He and Walda burst out laughing.

Just then, there was a scraping sound, and Roose appeared, this time shoving an enormous family-sized fridge freezer through the side door.

Jaime all but gasped. “That – that’s not going to fit in the kitchen.”

It was far from new, and kind of dirty, too – it looked like it had been stored outside. Brienne would not be happy.

“You think I’d keep it in the kitchen?” Roose asked. “Where you can still help yourself? I’ll be putting this up in my bedroom.”

Jaime couldn’t really see it getting up that narrow staircase, either, but it did rankle him that Roose had the master bedroom while he, Brienne and soon their baby were cramped in the smaller room, walking sideways around the bed and not knowing where the fuck they were going to put a cot or even a moses basket.

Brienne had been too generous in trying to attract a lodger.

“Come on then,” Roose said. “We’ve got to get this in the van somehow.”

Jaime did a big, fake, regretful wince. Held up his missing hand. “Not going to happen.”

Roose scoffed. “Hold the dog out of the way then. Locke –”

“Sorry,” Jaime grinned. “It’ll have to wait. I _just_ promised the lovely Walda that she could make me an even _prettier_ boy with some beautiful skin art.”

Walda blinked in surprise. “You did?”

“I _did_. I’ll have that one, please,” he said, pointing randomly at the flash on the nearest wall.

“That one?” Walda asked, looking at his choice. “Awwww, that’s so sweet.”

She took the flash off the wall and ducked behind the counter to make the transfer. Locke reluctantly put his coat on to help Roose, muttering something dark and full of swearwords under his breath.

Jaime took his coat off, and his scarf and glove and hat. Watching the two of them lug that massive fridge out into the snow with a spiteful measure of satisfaction.

“How big do you want it, darling?” Walda asked from behind the counter.

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Where are you putting it?”

“Oh, um … lower back?”

Walda’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Lower back?” she asked.

“Yeah, why not?” That was right where Brienne always put her hands while he was making love to her. It seemed romantic.

“Okay,” Walda said, with another raise of her eyebrows. “It’s your skin, darling.”

She led him upstairs with the transfer in her hand and then towards the big, freestanding mirror by the tattoo bed. She got him to hold his hoodie out of the way and positioned it on his back, asking him to examine it so he could decide for certain if that was where he wanted it placed.

“Looks good to me,” he said. And it actually did! Jaime liked the thought of it there. He could imagine sporting it back at home on the beach, building that extra room to his hut with his shirt off, everyone seeing it, everyone knowing.

Yes. He liked that thought a _lot_.

Walda got him up on the bed, face down, while she laid out her inks, put a needle in her gun and tucked some tissue paper into the waistband of Brienne’s jeans. She pressed the pedal, making the gun buzz alarmingly.

Abruptly, Jaime remembered that tattoos were meant to hurt.

“Ready?” Walda asked.

Jaime nodded, though really, he wasn’t. Maybe lugging a fridge about hadn’t been such a bad –

The needle was on him then, burning hot at the small of his back. The pain wasn’t horrendous, but gods, it couldn’t be ignored, either. He felt the needle drag over his skin, curling out the first letter of the tattoo he had chosen. Walda started singing.

“Not so bad once you get going,” Walda chirped when she stopped to dip her needle back in her ink.

“Yeah,” said Jaime between gritted teeth.

The long lines were the worst, he thought—the ones that curled, the ones that went over places where his skin was thin. Colouring wasn’t so bad though, and after about twenty minutes, Walda sprayed his back with something cold and chemical, wiped him down and told him he was all done.

Jaime got up on shaky legs to look in the mirror. Grinned at what he saw.

“I like it!” he said.

“Bit late now if you didn’t,” Walda laughed.

She put a dressing over his art and taped it in place with some micropore. Jaime adjusted his clothes and followed her back down the stairs.

Roose and Locke waited for him, Roose looking particularly irritated.

“All done?” Jaime asked with a smile. He paid Walda the fifty dragons and added another ten for her. Despite the impulsive nature of his decision, he really was very happy with it.

“Let’s go,” Roose grunted. Locke followed him, and they all crammed into the cab of Roose’s van together.

They drove back to Brienne’s house in silence, save for the rattling of the fridge in the back of the van. Podrick was awake now, poking his head between the seats to watch through the windscreen. Jaime scratched the big dog’s ears and grinned to himself, thinking of these two idiots trying to get that giant fridge up that narrow staircase. Jaime had never been happier to only have one hand.

Brienne had taken herself back to bed, so Jaime snuck in there with her before the fridge-moving began and the stairs were inevitably blocked. Downstairs he could hear Roose and Locke thumping around trying to get it off the street and into the front door. It was going to take them a while.

“No more sick?” Jaime asked, sitting down to rub Brienne’s hair softly.

She shook her head. “The game was making me feel nauseous, though. Even the movement of that!”

“Four more weeks,” he whispered softly.

“Where have you been?” she asked then, lifting her head from the pillow. “Podrick must be exhausted!”

“Oh, I ran into Roose as I was coming out of the park. I’ve been to his shop.”

“His tattoo shop?” Brienne rolled her eyes. “Oh, sorry – _skin art_.”

“Yeah. He wanted me to help him lug a fridge about, but while I was there, I thought I’d get some skin art myself!”

“What? You got a tattoo?” Brienne grinned. “Where? What? Show me!”

“It’s dressed at the moment.” He stood up to pull her hoodie off. “It stings like all the hells.”

He hoiked up his t-shirt and twisted around to gently pull the tape on the dressing.

“You got one _there_?!” Brienne laughed. “You got a tramp stamp?!”

“A what?”

But her eyes had widened, and her mouth had fallen open as she had seen the tattoo revealed. She gaped at it. Gaped at him.

“You like it?” he asked.

He turned to admire it again in the mirror himself. It was red and angry, a little bloody, too, but it looked good. A pretty little heart, surrounded by flowing script. Script that read

_Brienne_

at the top, and

_I’ll always be yours_

underneath.

“You – you got my name on you?” Brienne stammered.

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s – that’s …”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Jaime, that’s _huge_.”

“No, it only took about twenty minutes.”

“But – but … it’s for the rest of your life!”

“So?”

“So what happens if we break up?”

“We’re not going to break up.”

“You – you don’t know that. We don’t even know each other!”

“Oh,” he said. “It’s like that, is it? Double standards?”

“What double standards?”

“I mean it’s okay for you to have a literal _baby_ when we don’t know each other, but not okay for me to choose to get a tattoo?”

“That’s different!”

“How? ‘My body, my choice’? But not _my_ body? I think on the scale of lifelong commitments, my choice is _way_ behind yours!”

Brienne took a breath. Looked at the tattoo again. “Jaime …”

“If we broke up I could cover it, or get it lasered off.”

“You could.”

“Or … I could just leave it, to remind myself how much I’d once loved the mother of my child.”

Brienne sighed. Looked up at him with wide eyes. Soft eyes.

“I had to live such a fucking disciplined life for so long. Now it feels good to do things without worrying about the future, okay? And … I love you like crazy—more than I can ever tell you. Look what you’re going through to bring our child into the world.”

“Oh, Jaime.” She reached out and took hold of his stump. “You’re … you’re so …” But she didn’t complete that sentence. Instead, she got up on her knees on the bed and pressed a soft kiss to his face.

He caught her lips with his and kissed her back, again and again, cradling her face and pulling her against him. Hard against him, that strong, perfect body.

When they broke apart, she whispered: “I don’t want to be sick on you again, so we can’t … but I want to.”

Jaime laughed. Brienne’s hands slid down from his chest to his belly. To the button on his jeans.

“Oh!” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“Lie down,” she whispered.

Jaime crawled onto the bed. Lay on his side, facing her. He closed his eyes, and then her big hand was inside his jeans, stroking him to full hardness. Her big blue eyes held his, her teeth on her lip.

Her thumb circled the head of his cock, making him shudder.

“Mmh,” he said—the smallest of sounds.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “Roose.”

They could hear him on the stairs now, muffled swearing and thumping as the fridge slid over the stairs.

Jaime sighed. He pushed Brienne’s hand off his cock. Tucked it back into the pair of her knickers he wore. “Ugh, I’m so sick of this.”

“He’s right out there, Jaime.”

“I know!” he said, far too loudly. “I know, but I don’t care! This is your house, isn’t it? He’s not your father. You can have sex in your own house, Brienne.”

“Yes, but look … he’s a good lodger. Tidy, considerate … he pays on time. I don’t want to piss him off.”

“Who cares? If he doesn’t like it, he can fuck off somewhere else, can’t he? Gods, he’s got the biggest room, he commandeers your dining room all evening, and he’s got you tiptoeing around him all the time. That’s fucking crazy!”

“It isn’t, I –”

“They all laugh at us, you know?”

“What? Who?”

“His work colleagues, Walda and that bloody Locke. The pretty boy fucking the big bitch, I’ve heard it all today.”

Brienne scoffed. Waved her hand. “I know that’s new to you, but honestly. People have always laughed at me – it can’t hurt you, you just have to get a thick skin about these things.”

“A thick skin? Brienne –”

“If he leaves, I can’t pay my mortgage. That’s the bottom line. It will take time to find a replacement, plus another load of agency fees if I want them credit checked and all that. I can’t afford it.”

“I’ll pay your fucking mortgage! I’ll pay it right off if that’s what you’re worried about. Hells, I’ll buy you another house, a bigger one, so you actually have room for the baby to sleep somewhere!”

“How dare you!” she yelled. Clearly not worried about Roose hearing _now_. “I’ve worked hard for this house, my parents worked hard to save the money for my deposit, too. How dare you come in here flashing your cash like it’s _nothing_?”

“I didn’t mean that –”

“Yes, you did! You’ve been itching to say it for weeks, too. I’ve seen it on your face ever since you got here! My tiny house, my lack of a car, my lodger. My shitty job!”

“You think I care about any of those things? What the fuck, Brienne – is – is that who you think I am?”

“I don’t know who you are, Jaime! That’s the point! I don’t understand … you don’t want the baby to have your name, but now you come at me like some sugar daddy, offering to buy me a _house_? What am I, your secret mistress? Your kept woman?”

“No! That – that’s not it. That’s not it at all.”

“Well, what _is ‘_ it’, then? What’s the problem with the baby having your name?”

Jaime sighed. He grabbed his phone from the chest of drawers. Thumbed through it, finding his music app and opening it. He typed his own name into the search bar.

“Here,” he said, holding up the screen to show her. His first album, released when he was seventeen. It had been called _Kingslayer_ after his signature piece – a deep, slow, haunting solo that slowly lifted itself into bold strokes of light as it went on. It was a piece of hope, of redemption, of finding something beautiful when everything was futile.

On the album cover, seventeen-year-old Jaime stood half in shadow, his head dropped forward but his eyes holding the gaze of the lens. His violin in one hand, the bow in the other.

“You think I didn’t work hard for my money? I practised nine hours a day from the age of four. I lived in the conservatory from the age of six. Every day, most of the day – violin, violin, violin. Until I couldn’t have a thought, have an emotion without translating it into music, until that was the only way I could feel, the only way I could live. Through music.”

“Jaime – I didn’t say that –”

“I was taught by the finest musician of his generation, Arthur Dayne. That man … he was my father in every way but biologically – he trained me, he helped me, he gave me my passion and my fire and my love of the instrument. He was my life, pleasing him, making him proud of me. I cared about him more than anyone I ever knew. Only … he didn’t tell me how to live without it. When I lost my hand, when I couldn’t play …”

“That must have been very hard.”

“Hard? I don’t … I still don’t know how to do it. It’s like living in the shadow of this huge person, only … that person is me. That’s why I feel so disconnected from my own name. Unworthy of it, almost. Look –”

He held up his phone to her again, this time scrolling through dozens of his album covers. Pictures of himself, at various ages, with various lengths of golden hair. Smiling, serious. Dressed in suits, dressed in shirts. Holding his violin.

Along the bottom of every cover, in modern, bold capitals:

LANNISTER

“Lannister. Lannister. Lannister,” he said. “That’s who I was. Not Jaime. Never.”

He opened up his last album, the last one he had recorded before the earthquake anyway. Since then, there had been several new compilations released and one of unreleased material that hadn’t made the cut of any other albums, but this was his last one. His _real_ last one.

Jaime started the third track, an old religious piece he had revived called _Light of the Seven_. It was a duet with his mentor; Arthur Dayne had been a piano prodigy as well a virtuoso on the violin.

“Listen to this.”

At first, it was just the gentle sounds of Dayne’s piano, but then, the music swelled, and the sound of Lannister’s violin filled the room, despite the tiny, tinny speakers of Jaime’s phone. Gods, it was beautiful. So beautiful.

Every note was perfect, beyond perfect – every note was an emotion, every pull of his bow a story. Each bar wove together seamlessly, and Jaime could still feel that feeling in his heart, that feeling that he always had when he played. His phantom fingers could feel how it felt, even now. Could feel how it felt to draw the bow across the strings, to feel the note vibrate through his whole body. That all-consuming feeling he could only describe as _love_.

He looked up at Brienne with tears in his eyes. Tears on his cheeks.

“Lannister will never play that way again,” he said.

And then he was in Brienne’s arms, pulled into a ferocious hug where she clung to him and gripped him and held him hard against her. Hard.

He dropped his phone, still playing that ghost man’s tune, and buried his face in her neck. Kissed her. Wept on her.

“How can I give our child that name?” he asked. “It’s not even mine any more.”

“It is,” she whispered. “Of course it is.”

But Jaime shook his head. “Lannister … He’s gone. Another person. Another time. Let the baby have your name. Please?”

Brienne looked a little bewildered, but she nodded. “If that’s what you want?”

“It _is_. Please.”

“And, look – I didn’t say you didn’t work hard for your money, Jaime. Really, I didn’t. That’s not what I meant. But … buying me a house …”

“Not for you, then. If I … if I bought the baby a house? As an investment, held in trust? In his name, so he would have something always, with you as trustee?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not vulgar, not a sugar daddy. Just … a practical question. Where are you going to put a cot in here? How is it going to work when he needs a bed?”

Brienne hung her head. “I could move things?”

“Where to? And … if Roose complains about the noise we make now, how do you think he’s going to feel about a crying baby?”

Brienne sighed and flopped back onto the pillows, a hand over her forehead. She looked worn out. Exhausted.

“I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “If I’m honest, I was just trying to get through the next three weeks without dying.”

Jaime nodded. “Will you think about it? Not for yourself, but for the baby? In his name?”

“All right,” she said in a small voice. “I’ll think about it.”

“Speaking of the baby’s name,” Jaime said, picking up his phone again. It was still playing _Light of the Seven_. “If it is a boy, perhaps we could name him for my mentor? Arthur Dayne?”

“Arthur O’Tarth? I think –”

“Oh, yes,” Jaime said, grinning at the half-rhyme. “Perhaps not.”

“Perhaps Dayne, though? That could be a given name?”

“Dayne O’Tarth? Yes … I like that.”

“I do, too.” She took her hand off her head and reached for Jaime, pulling him down to the pillows beside her. Holding him close. Stroking his locs as they listened to his former self play the music he didn’t know he would lose.

Jaime felt sad, but he also felt loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Captain Tarthister for her help with this chapter, invaluable advice as always. And to auntie_social for continuing to let me play in this universe!
> 
> I'm planning to alternate between chapters of this and chapters of Us Without Each Other, so if you'd like to be kept up to date and see teasers etc, then please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	3. The New Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is 21 weeks pregnant ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No real warnings for this chapter, other than a smidge of what might be considered breath play? I'm being ultra-cautious here, though.

The heat of Qarth smacked Brienne in the face as soon as she stepped off the plane. It was like a physical force – a force that sucked sweat from her pores before she’d even made it down the steps.

Jaime was waiting for her as soon as she cleared customs; of course, his hand went straight for her belly. Of course, they stood and snogged like a couple of teenagers at the school disco.

They hadn’t seen each other in seven weeks.

They’d called, of course, every night, and most mornings if Brienne wasn’t on an early shift. Plus they sent each other messages all day. Shared photos of their lunches, things that made them think of each other, updates and gossip and things they knew would make each other laugh.

“Look at you!” Jaime said, a huge grin on his handsome face. Gods, she’d missed his face. “You have a proper bump.”

Brienne pressed her sundress smooth over her belly. She was twenty-one weeks pregnant today, but she still didn’t really think she looked anything other than thick around the waist. Thankfully, the horrendous nausea had passed now – it had been three weeks since she’d needed her sick bucket and nine weeks since she’d needed it every day.

Even the turbulence coming out of Winterfell airport hadn’t set it off.

Arms around each other, Jaime’s head on Brienne’s shoulder, they went to pick up her suitcase and then headed down to animal control to collect Podrick.

The big Leonberger was overjoyed to see Jaime, woofing and bouncing about his legs while he had his head ruffled. He seemed glad to be out of his doggy crate too, despite the sweltering weather and his thick coat.

Jaime hauled Brienne’s case into the car park – she’d actually managed to put clothes in it this time as Jaime had offered to buy the big sack of Pod’s food his end. He had a grin on his face as he led her through the rows of cars, stopping not in front of his Beetle, but a big, vintage camper van.

“Is this yours?” Brienne asked.

“Yeah! What do you think?”

“Wow … it’s … wow!”

“I thought it would make things easier, with Pod and with a car seat and a pram and all that.”

Brienne laughed. “It certainly will.”

“Plus, I fell in love with her. She drives really well, and she hasn’t let me down yet.”

“’She’?”

Jaime chuckled. “I shouldn’t name my cars, it’s always too upsetting when I have to scrap them, but Brienne … meet Genna.”

“Genna! I like it.” She ran her hand down Genna’s flank. Patted her wing.

Jaime beamed. He heaved Brienne’s suitcase into the back and pulled open the sliding side door for Podrick. The big dog leapt in and sprawled out, panting. Taking up the entire floor space. Jaime even had a bowl of water ready for him, one of those non-spill ones for car rides. Pod lapped at it gratefully, and Jaime slid Genna’s door closed.

He pulled open the passenger door for Brienne, and she clambered in onto the leather bench seat. Put her seatbelt on. Jaime got in the driver’s side and looked at her expectantly.

“Well?” he said.

“What?”

“How did it go? The scan!”

“I was going to tell you when we got to your place.”

“Well, I can’t wait that long.”

She might have known he wouldn't be able to wait. Brienne’s ultrasound appointment had been first thing that morning, her flight a few short hours later. She grinned and kissed him.

“All is well,” she said. “Baby is measuring fine for dates, moving well …”

“And?”

“And …?”

“Did you find out?”

“I did.”

“And? What? Is it a Dayne or an Ella?”

Brienne reached into the sundress’s pocket to pull out a handful of black and white photos. She’d kept them close, unable to stop looking at them on the plane. She passed them to Jaime.

“Oh, they’re so clear!”

Jaime was right – the first ultrasound she’d had, the baby had been little more than a couple of blobs, a head and a body, but this time, you could see so much more. Arms, legs … each individual finger. The shape of the baby’s nose.

He marvelled at them for a few moments before looking back up to her. “Well? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Here …” she leafed through the photos to find one particular one.

“What is that?”

“It’s taken upwards from underneath. Between the legs.”

Jaime squinted. Rotated the photo. “Oh! I see … is that … is that a – ?”

“It is!”

“Oh, gods! So … I was right?”

Brienne nodded. “It’s a boy.”

Jaime let out an explosive little laugh. “I was right?! We’re having a son?”

She took his hand and gently placed it on her belly. “Daddy, meet Dayne.”

“Gods!” He pulled her close, all the photos sliding off his legs and onto the seat between them. He kissed her. Kissed her again. Kissed her for ages, his hand sliding over the sundress, up from her belly to her breast. “I told you,” he said. “Blue eyes. Freckled nose. That’s our boy.”

Brienne laughed. “You had a fifty per cent chance, Jaime!”

“Have faith, Brienne. The Shade never lies!”

He picked up the scan photos and had another look at them, shaking his head in wonder. Then he started Genna’s engine and pulled out of the car park.

Jaime still drove as awkwardly as ever – having to balance the wheel between his stump and his knee when he changed gear, still reaching over his body to do it with his right hand.

But he looked good. Happy. Content. Far better than he had in Winterfell.

They drove through the Red Waste for an hour before they arrived at the outskirts of Qarth, dusty and mostly deserted in the afternoon heat.

It reminded Brienne of the first time they had met, rattling through the streets in Jaime’s Beetle, tongue-tied and not knowing how to speak to this gorgeous man. Everything she said sounding blunt or defensive.

Now she clasped the stump of his right arm in her lap, and his child grew inside her. It seemed impossible.

Unlike the Beetle, Genna the camper van made it all the way through the city suburbs and all the way to Jaime’s plot on the beach. He hadn’t been wrong when he said she was reliable.

He pulled her up on the grass verge behind the beach – it was the closest you could drive to his shack without getting bogged down in sand. He got out and opened the side door for Podrick.

“Oh, by the way,” he said. “You know I said I was coming back to finish that extra room on my place?”

“Yes?” Brienne said as she slithered from Genna’s passenger side door.

“I ended up doing a little bit more than that.”

He wasn’t kidding. As soon as they rounded the trees, and got onto the beach, Brienne could see.

Jaime’s hut was gone completely. Obliterated. In its place was … well, there was no other way to put it. It was a _house_.

A nice one, too. Single storey, lots of windows. A wide wooden verandah. Very modern, but still very much a bohemian beach house, up on stilts above the sand. Brienne turned to Jaime with an open mouth.

“You – you built a house?”

Jaime shrugged. “Well, not personally.”

“What – but, how?!”

He’d only been gone for seven weeks. This … this was beyond comprehension.

“It’s a modular home. A prefab,” Jaime grinned. “I know a guy who imports them. They come in sections, all you have to do is put them up.”

This was not like any prefab Brienne had ever seen. They’d all been like boxes, cold and dreary and poky and cheap-looking. This was a big, modern, spacious home. “And you … you did this?”

“Well, I hired Bronn’s team to do it. Once the groundwork was done and the utilities connected, it went up in under a week. I slept in Genna.”

She remembered the spate of video calls she’d had from the beach in the evenings. Jaime telling her he wanted to lie out under the stars while they had phone sex. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise when you came. I have an actual working shower now, and look!” Jaime had erected a washing line outside which had four pairs of harem pants and a pair of flared jeans hanging on it. “I have a washing machine. And no more generator. I’m hooked up to the mains – I’ve gone legit! Back on the grid.”

“Wow.”

“Come inside!” He grabbed her hand, leaving her suitcase on the sand, and pulled her up the steps to the verandah. It was beautiful, soft orange acacia wood that would weather over time to glow in the sunshine. Facing the sunset over the ocean.

He unlocked the wide patio doors and slid them open. Inside was a sunny kitchen, white walls and wooden units, with a treated acacia worktop. Opposite was a breakfast bar with four wooden stools.

Pod trotted through the doors behind them, his nails clicking on the wooden floors as he ran about sniffing everything. Panting excitedly.

An archway led into a living room – again with big windows that overlooked the ocean. This room was pretty bare – only a few beanbags littered the floor, the ones Jaime had used to keep on the hut’s verandah.

“I’m still waiting for some furniture to arrive,” he explained. “Sofas … beds. The big stuff.”

“Beds?” she asked. “Plural?”

Jaime waggled his eyebrows. “Come see the bedrooms!”

Off the living room was a hallway, lit from above with a narrow skylight. Jaime kicked the first door open to show a bathroom – a shower, a nice big jacuzzi bath, a sink and a toilet.

The next door along was a bedroom – Jaime had set out a big dog bed in there, as well as some bowls and the huge sack of Podrick’s food. He’d also got him some dog toys – some squeaky things and a big plastic bone.

Podrick ran in, tail wagging wildly, hard enough to hurt when it inevitably whacked into their legs. He looked at the empty bowls and then up at Jaime expectantly.

Jaime laughed. “Aeroplane food not up to much, Pod?”

He gripped the sack of dog food between his knees and tore it open before scooping some into one of the bowls.

Podrick dived in and demolished the lot in seconds. Then, hilariously, he went to the doggy bed and tried to lie down.

It was far too small for him, as Brienne had known it would be the moment she walked into the room. His head and back legs hung over both sides.

“Oh,” said Jaime. “He’s bigger than I remembered.”

“I had to make the one he has at home myself! I stitched two extra-large beds together.”

“I think I have something that might work,” Jaime said. “In the next room, if you want to come? Anyway, I thought it would be nice for Podrick to have his own room,” Jaime said. “Or, you know, if we decide to have six kids …”

He looked distinctly misty-eyed at the prospect. Brienne laughed nervously; she couldn’t imagine wanting to go through all that vomiting six times over.

When Jaime opened the next door in the hallway, Brienne had to stop herself gasping. It was a child’s room. Nursery furniture. A changing table, a baby bath. A shelf full of little toys. A chest of drawers, the top stacked with a pile of muslins and some folded blankets. A couple of little outfits on hangers. In a box leaning against the wall was a pram, a very expensive one. One that Brienne knew cost more than any car she’d ever owned. There was a high chair, too, and a little car seat.

“Jaime …” She could barely breathe.

Jaime fidgeted. “It’s for when you stay,” he said. “Just to make things easier. So you don’t have to spend loads on baggage at the airport.”

“You’re putting me to shame,” she said. “I haven’t bought anything yet, not so much as a sleepsuit.”

“You haven’t really been up to shopping lately,” Jaime said. They were silent for a moment. “Anyway – we could use this for Pod?”

He grabbed the single mattress that was leaning against the wall behind them, still wrapped in plastic. “I’ll get another one for in here.”

Brienne nodded, still struck a little dumb. Jaime dragged the mattress out of the room and back towards Podrick, though Brienne suspected her dog was still trying to work out how to get comfortable on the small one.

She looked around the room again while Jaime was gone, at all the new things. All the things he’d bought.

The truth was that she wasn’t really able to afford much at the moment. Clothes she could get with her mall staff discount, over time, but big things, like a pram, a cot, a car seat … She wasn’t one of those people who had mummy friends to pass things on, either.

“Anyway,” Jaime said as he came back. “I got a cotbed on order too, but I thought we’d probably put that in our room while he’s little. Or we can co-sleep when you’re here, if that’s what you’re doing?”

“I hadn’t really thought about that yet.”

“Yeah, it’s early yet. I don’t blame you.”

There was another awkward silence then, surrounded by these lovely things.

“One more,” said Jaime after a minute, taking her hand and leading her through to the master bedroom.

This room was a very nice size, about double her bedroom back at home. You could actually walk right the way around it and still have room for wardrobes.

Since his bed had not yet arrived, Jaime had still been sleeping on a mattress on the floor, a big soft kingsize thing covered in a tie-dye throw. He had another brightly-coloured throw pinned up at the window, serving as a curtain and providing shade.

“Look, I even bought a TV,” he said with a grin. “Just for bedtime.”

“At least here we won’t have to play music when we have sex.”

“I know. And no Roose barging in just when I’m about to nut in your mouth.”

Brienne laughed; that really hadn’t been their finest moment. She noticed Jaime looking at her. Chewing his lip. She reached for him, let her hand run down his chest, between the two halves of his open shirt. He hummed, and she stepped closer. Kissed his neck, pulled his shirt aside to kiss his shoulder. His skin was golden again, she noticed. Kissed by the sun. “Since I’m here … do you want to nut in my mouth now to make up for it?” she whispered against his lips.

Jaime trembled a little, looked up at her with darkened eyes and moist lips. “Yes. Gods, yes.”

This worked for them. No matter what else Brienne was uncertain about, having sex with Jaime was always perfection. Not that either of them were particularly _good_ in bed per se. How could they be? Neither of them had much experience.

It was more that they were good _together_. When they had sex, it felt like the world seemed to stop just for them, like time stood still, and their hard breaths and hard-beating hearts were the only sounds in the world.

He’d managed to get her dress partway off, though if she was honest, he’d done it the wrong way. It wasn’t going to fit down over her belly and hips, he’d have to lift the whole lot off over her head.

He didn’t seem to be too worried at the moment, though. He left it bunched at her ribcage while he was nibbling and sucking his way down her neck. Onto her chest. He stopped to admire her breasts, she noticed – they were fuller, and her nipples were darker – almost full enough that she could claim to have cleavage!

They tumbled onto the mattress in a messy, grasping heap of limbs and hands. Jaime dumped his shirt to one side and lifted up to shove his harem pants down his thighs. Brienne was pleased to see he’d stopped wearing underwear now he was back at home – his cock sprang free, hard and eager.

She tackled the sundress problem herself, wriggling it back up and then lifting it over her head. She unclipped her bralette and kicked her knickers off. Jaime sat back on his knees, waiting, stroking his cock almost absently.

For a moment, Brienne had a little panic. Her body had changed – it had changed a _lot._ Not only because of the pregnancy, that was to be expected. But she hadn’t been to the gym in months. Once she had gone four or five times a week, and hadn’t Jaime said he’d been attracted to her muscles?

She just hadn’t been well enough – even now a day’s work exhausted her to the point where she came home, microwaved something and then fell into bed. She was still big, of course, nothing would change that, but now she was big and kind of _soft_.

It didn’t seem to dampen Jaime’s ardour. He lowered himself on top of her quite carefully, she noticed. Careful to keep his weight off her belly. His chest hair and his beads brushed her nipples as he leaned over her.

Then his mouth was on hers again, warm and wet and intense. The scratch of his beard on her chin, the heat of his breath in her mouth. The smell of the sun on his skin, of that oil he sprayed on his locs.

Jaime …

Her hands wanted hold of him, wanted to touch everything they could of him. He was always like a dream, like something she could scarcely believe she possessed.

He broke their kiss. Knelt beside her for a moment with a grin on his face.

“Sixty-nine?” he asked. “That was, after all, what Roose interrupted.”

“So it was,” she grinned.

He wriggled around to stretch out on his side, his feet on the pillows. Brienne manoeuvred herself too, rolling onto her side and shifting on the mattress until she was eye-level with his cock. She took it in her hand. Placed a soft kiss on the tip, which made him shudder.

He grinned at her. Lifted her left leg and ducked beneath it, his locs falling onto her thigh. She felt his breath on her cunt – closer, closer again. Then his mouth was on her, lips and tongue and a sigh of breath, seven weeks of longing and want.

He was snogging her down there, she thought even as she whimpered and ground herself against his face. Like genuinely French kissing her cunt. Part of her wanted to laugh – part of her wanted to scream. It felt so impossibly good, that combination of sweet sucking and tickling tongue, so good that she forgot this was meant to be a sixty-nine. She dropped his cock, clung to Jaime’s legs and wailed.

Ronnet hadn’t done it like Jaime did it – he’d attacked her cunt with his tongue like she was a slot machine. Put enough licks in, and an orgasm would fall out. There was no passion for the deed itself, no true desire in it. Consequently, and much to her chagrin, the slot machine had never paid out.

Jaime had his head turned to the side now, his tongue delving inside her, then lapping upward to caress her clit. Gods, it just felt so deliciously _obscene_. Just the intimacy of it, the sheer intensity. It made her feel wanton and wild. It made her feel as she’d never felt in her life.

Her voice echoed off the prefabricated walls, vibrated the windows. Her fingers dug eight little crescents in Jaime’s thighs. She had him half rolled over, pinned between her thighs so his chin, that soft, bushy part of his beard, rolled over her clit every time his jaw moved. And his tongue … dear gods, his _tongue_ …

It was going to kill her. Her body couldn’t take it. For a frantic second, she was genuinely terrified she would have a heart attack or maybe even worse, that she would pee in Jaime’s face, but then she realised that she was just going to come.

For a few seconds, her body was filled with blinding white pleasure, and then she was shivering, gasping. Shivering again.

“Oh,” she moaned. “ _Gods_.”

Jaime lifted his head from between her thighs, looking mussed and squashed and wet and very very pleased with himself.

“Gods … gods. I’m sorry,” she panted.

He looked confused. “Why?”

“The sixty-nine. You’re supposed to be nutting in _my_ mouth, remember?”

His grin grew even wider, and he pressed a soft kiss to her inner thigh. “The night is young, Ms O’Tarth.”

He nudged his cock at her, scrambling his hips further around on the sheets. Brienne wrapped her hand back around his member, dipping her head to slide the warm, leaking head between her lips. Jaime groaned the groan of a man who was probably going to nut in ten seconds flat.

Brienne liked that; this man looked like an underwear model, he was rich as all the hells and kind of a tortured genius. But _she_ gave him pleasure. For _her,_ he could hardly contain himself. She had never before felt this desirable. She had never before felt this significant.

She swirled her tongue, and he cried out. Clung to her arse with his hand and his stump. He turned his head and bit down on the tender skin of her inner thigh. She flinched; he licked it better.

She swallowed the length of him; the shaft of his cock throbbed in her mouth. He was so worked up, so desperate and urgent. He was trying to thrust and trying to hold back, both at the same time.

“Squeeze … squeeze me …” he begged, his voice strangled.

She lifted her mouth away from his cock. “What?”

“With your thighs. Oh, gods, please …”

“With my thighs? On – on your head?”

Brienne had not done that before – not around his head. It seemed a little risky. But Jaime was all but begging, so she clamped her thighs gingerly about his face, and squeezed, just a little. Released him.

“No. Harder,” he told her.

“I don’t want to –”

“Please. Squeeze me. Suck me. I can take it.”

“Jaime –”

“Look. If I can’t breathe, if it’s too much, I’ll grab your arse, okay? Like this.” He clutched a handful of her increasingly generous bottom and gave it a squeeze.

“Okay,” she said, still a little reluctant. “What if you black out or something, though?”

He laughed. “Then I’ll die a happy man!”

Brienne rolled her eyes, but how could she refuse him? She clamped him again between her thighs. Tighter. Harder.

He groaned, muffled between her legs, but his hand stayed where it was. Not on her arse.

She dipped her head to take his cock again, loving the wet, decadent sounds of sliding it into her mouth. She released him from her thigh grip, let him gasp a few breaths and then squeezed him again.

This time, he came. He gave no more warning than a muffled cry from between her legs, and then his cock pulsed warm seed in her mouth, again and again. When she released him, she had burns from his locs on her thighs. Imprints of their beads.

Jaime crawled up the bed and into her arms. Rested his head on her chest and grinned at her.

“I know, I’m a pervert.”

She laughed. “Don’t ask me. I don’t have a big enough sample size to be the judge of that!”

He laughed too. Kissed her collarbone and stroked her back. He looked thoughtful. “Three men?”

“Including you.”

“Me, Ronnet Connington … and who else?” He lifted his head, his green eyes flashing wickedly. “Not the guy you work with, is it?”

“Davos? Gods, no! What – are you jealous?”

“Of course! Whoever he is, I’ll hate him automatically. Did you lose your virginity to him?”

“Shut up!”

“What? Come on … I’m not shaming you. Unless you count homemade fleshlights, I lost my virginity to my wife, and I was ridiculously old. Almost thirty.”

“Virginity is a social construct,” Brienne said grumpily.

“I know that. I’m just curious.”

He rubbed his still damp beard over her right nipple. Bit his lower lip and looked up at her with wide green eyes. Oh, how dare he? He fucking _melted_ her. Every barrier she had, every piece of resistance she could muster. It scared her, but it made her happy, too.

“His name was Goodwin,” she sighed.

“Goodwin?” asked Jaime. “I hate that name.”

Brienne scoffed. “He was one of my father’s friends. Older than me, much older, and married too.”

Jaime gave a huge, exaggerated gasp. “Brienne!”

“I know. But it only happened a few times, it wasn’t an affair or anything.”

Jaime wrinkled up his brow. “How old were you?”

Brienne shrugged. “Twenty-five. Not a kid. He owned the gym where I trained. He taught me kickboxing and krav maga and taught me how to lift. It just … happened.”

Jaime raised an eyebrow.

“I know that sounds awful. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

“Hey, I’m not judging you.”

“I’d always been a tall, massive kid. Training myself, getting big and strong gave me a purpose to it, if that makes sense? It was the first time I felt good and confident. I think losing my virginity was part of that.”

Jaime nodded. “It makes sense.”

“It only happened four times. And … he was a nice looking man. Handsome.”

Jaime got up and scrambled on his bedside pile of clothes for his phone. Switched it on. “What was the gym called?”

“Why?”

He grinned, looking devilish. “I want to look it up. I want to see how handsome he was.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m nosy and I’m jealous! You think I didn’t immediately go and find Ronnet Connington on social media?”

“You did?” This surprised her – she hadn’t thought Ronnet had any accounts any more. He’d obviously just blocked _her_.

“I did. So don’t make me look up every gym in Tarth. It’ll take me ages.”

Brienne laughed. “It was called ‘Master of Arms’. Evenfall Road, Tarth. I think he has a website.”

Jaime thumbed his phone. “Found it,” he grinned. “There he is … ‘Owner and Proprieter, Coach Goodwin.’ Gods! You think _that’s_ handsome?”

“In a kind of an older man way.”

“You must think I’m a god, then!”

“Stop it!”

“How big was his dick?”

“Jaime, stop!” Brienne was laughing hard now. “Please.”

“Not bigger than mine, right? He looks like he’s got a small one. Probably if he’s a juicer.”

“He’s not a juicer.”

“It shrivels your manhood I hear.”

“I wouldn’t know!” she giggled.

He flicked through some more pages on the site, then held up the phone to her. “Is – is that _you_?”

It was. Brienne holding her third prize kickboxing cup, the one she’d won the year before she moved to Winterfell. It was a terrible photo – she looked really red in the face, sweaty and freckly and double-chinned. Kind of gormless, too. Her arms looked pumped, though; she missed her arms.

“Gods, get rid of it!” she laughed. It was probably the worst thing she could have said.

“No chance, I’m saving it. I want something to wank over when you go back to Winterfell.”

“That will give you nightmares!”

“I don’t think it will,” he leered. “Though what were you thinking with that bowl cut?”

“It was easy to manage!”

He leaned over her. Kissed her hard. “You’re _so_ fucking sexy,” he told her. “No wonder that shrivel-dicked old man couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”

“It wasn’t like that.” She shook her head, still grinning despite herself.

“But _I’ve_ got you now,” he grinned, his eyes looking positively wicked. He wrapped Brienne possessively in both his arms. “I’ve got you, and I’m keeping you.”

Brienne put a hand on her belly. “Looks like you’ve staked a pretty good claim.”

“I have, haven’t I?”

He looked _very_ pleased with himself, she thought.

“Are you hungry?” he asked then. “Or have I filled you up with all my creamy goodness?”

Brienne made a face.

Jaime laughed again. “You seemed pretty eager at the time.”

“Swallowing a man’s load is all about context,” she told him primly. “In the heat of the moment, wonderful. In the cold light of day … not so appealing.”

“Fair enough! So … food would be good?”

“Food would be good.”

“Wait here,” he said. “Rest. You must be exhausted after your flight and then all _that_. I’ll cook something.”

Brienne smiled softly to herself as she watched him walk through the new house and into his kitchen, naked as his nameday. He didn’t put so much as a towel around himself as he poured rice into a saucepan and set it on the gleaming induction stove.

Podrick came in, yawning and whining a little. He flopped onto the mattress next to Brienne, licking the sweat off her leg. She stroked his head and then reached for her clothes to pull her knickers and bralette back on – she didn’t share Jaime’s penchant for nudity. Even being naked in front of her dog felt weird.

Jaime sang to himself while he cooked, she noticed. Not a song as such, but music. She wondered if it was something that he used to play. It seemed to make him happy, though – he had a smile on his face as he chopped a squash with a special tool he had anchored to the worktop that let him work one-handed.

He diced it, added it to a pan and glugged in a can of coconut milk. Still singing. Still naked. Brienne watched him with her heart glowing in her chest. This was so wonderful. This was how it could be.

He brought the food through to the bedroom when he was done cooking – a Qarthian dish with rice and the squash in coconut milk, finished off with some dried squid he’d fried. It was gentle on the stomach but tasted terrific, and he watched her eat it with soft eyes.

When they’d finished, Jaime shoved Podrick off his half of the bed so they could make love again, tenderly and slowly.

“Are you happy?” he whispered as they lay entangled and sweaty on the tie-dye sheets afterwards.

Brienne opened her eyes – she’d been dozing. By now, the heat of the day was finally dying down, and the sky was slowly turning to evening colours.

“Happy?” she asked, her throat raw from crying out her pleasure to the blissfully empty house.

“Here. You like the house?”

“It’s lovely.”

He wrapped his arms around her belly, spooned up behind her. He was quiet for a long moment, just humming happily as he kissed her shoulder. Then he said: “You could stay.”

Brienne swallowed. “Don’t …”

“I know. It’s too soon. We don’t know each other.” There was a slight piss-takey edge to his voice, though.

She sighed. “ _Please_ , Jaime. Not now.”

He fell quiet again for a couple of minutes, but he felt rigid in the bed behind her. Then, abruptly, he sat up.

“I’m not Ronnet Connington, you know. Nor your old codger from the gym. I’m not using you when I feel like a shag, nor am I suddenly going to decide you’re too ugly or whatever.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Because it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like you think I’m about to fuck you over at any minute.”

“I don’t.”

“So why are you keeping me at arms’ length? Why do you get weird whenever I talk about the future, or when I buy anything for the baby?”

“I – I’m not weird.”

“Yes, you are. You clam up, you go quiet, you look like you’re having a panic attack.”

“I don’t!”

He huffed and turned away. “If you can’t even talk about it –”

Brienne closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. “It feels like pressure, okay? If you must know. All of this feels like ‘look at me, look what I can do, look at what I can buy!’ and it’s all so expectant. Like you’re pushing me all the time to accept things from you. To be with you.”

“I’m _really_ not.”

“Everybody thinks I’m insane, you know? Not only did I get very publicly jilted at the altar, but now I’m pregnant five minutes later after a holiday romance. People are falling all over themselves to tell me to be careful.”

“Who? Who is saying that?”

“Roose. My father. People at work – my boss Sansa just shook her head in despair when I told her I was pregnant. They all think I’m an idiot.”

“Who cares what other people think? They don’t know.”

“Maybe they do? What in all the hells do I know about relationships? Maybe I’m not the person to be judging this.”

“What? So … you think Roose and your father and your snooty bitchface boss know more about our relationship than you or I do? It’s none of their fucking business!”

“Come on, be realistic. If you were my father, or my friend, would you think I was making the right choices here? Would you be pleased for me, or would you worry that I was about to be spectacularly humiliated again?”

“I’d want you to be happy. I’d be pleased you’d found someone who wants that for you, too.”

“How are they supposed to know that’s true? How am I?”

“You think I’m lying to you now?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Jaime, that’s literally the point! You can be a week away from a wedding you’ve planned for a year and still not know.”

“Yeah, and you can be fourteen years into a marriage and find out your wife has been cheating with some weasel-faced little conductor, too. What – are you never going to fall in love again? Never take that chance in case you get hurt?”

“I just want to be careful! What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. I completely agree. But … this is more than careful. This is a wall, three feet thick, all around you. A wall that doesn’t even let me be nice to you, or buy things for our child because it’s _pressure_.”

“Jaime –”

“Like it or not, we’re committed, Brienne. This baby commits us. We’re always going to be in each other’s lives. You can fight that, and make both of us miserable, or you can accept it, and we can enjoy this.”

“Enjoy it?”

He let out a big sigh. “I was married for fourteen years, yeah? Do you know how many times in all those years we talked about having kids? Starting a family?”

“No.”

“Zero. The subject literally never came up once. How fucking weird is that? That just about sums up my marriage. So this, for me, is like my chance at _life_. The thought of being a dad, of getting to know my own kid, it’s really powerful. And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to miss any of it. I hate that I couldn’t be there at the scan today. I hate the thought that I won’t see Dayne’s first smile, or his first steps, that I might miss his birth because I’m in a whole other country. I’m his dad. We’re together. Why can’t we just … _be together_?”

“Well, all right. But it’s not that simple is it? Setting aside whether or not it’s too soon, where would we live? Do you want to move back to Westeros?”

Jaime swallowed. He was uncharacteristically quiet.

“I didn’t think so. You hated every second of being in Winterfell. And it’s lovely here, but... I’d have to give up everything. My home, my job, my father, my friends...”

“There are other jobs. New people. And your father isn’t a million miles away. There’s Skype, or you can visit whenever you want.”

“But –”

“I have the money. You know I do. More money than I can ever spend, and I’m no hoarder. Money’s not everything, I know. But it eases the passage – it makes things more seamless. I’d never begrudge you seeing your father. Or _anything._ Anything you wanted, anything you needed.”

“I’m not some gold digger.”

He sighed. “I know that. Gods, this argument is _circular._ What I’m trying to say is ... Let me in. That’s what this comes down to. Let me in, let me help, let me participate. You’re going to kill this before it starts if you don’t.”

“I’m going to –”

“I’m excited about this. About being a father, about being with you. Stop telling me it’s wrong to be feeling this way.”

“I –” Brienne floundered for a moment, not finding the words. Everything she started to say died in her mouth. “I’m not saying that. I didn’t mean for it to come across that way.”

“Are _you_ excited? You want to be with me, you want to have a baby with me?”

“You know I do.”

“Then why give yourself things to worry about? Haven’t we had our share of shitty relationships? Haven’t you scrimped and saved long enough? Haven’t I worked hard enough to be able to buy my son things I can easily afford? Why don’t we just let ourselves be happy?”

“But we don’t know –”

“Of course we don’t. But I think … worst-case scenario, we’re happy for a few months and it all ends. I think we could be adults about it. I think we could co-parent successfully.”

“I think we could, too.”

“Then what’s the problem? Stay with me. Please.”

“I … I’ll think about it. Is that enough? I need a little time.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m not pushing you. I’m really not.”

Brienne looked down. She nodded, silent.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” he said. “The beach is quiet at this time of the evening, and it’s cooler. And … I’m not cross with you or anything, all right?”

Brienne sighed and smiled. She squeezed his shoulder. “All right. That sounds nice, let’s do that.”

The beach was beautiful. The lights of the city sparkled around them like fireflies on the horizon. In the faint distance, music played from one of the clubs on the seafront. The air was warm and everything was salty.

Jaime and Brienne walked hand in hand through the surf, pursued by an enthusiastic Podrick, bounding in the waves, getting himself soaked and then shaking his coat out before running back into the sea again. They laughed. They kissed. They were happy.

They really were. Gods, it was easy to be with Jaime. So easy to have feelings for him, to want him so much it was like a physical ache. It didn’t feel as though they’d known each other for only a few months. It seemed like they had always been together.

So when they turned back up the beach, walking slowly back towards the new beach house, Brienne let herself imagine it. A life with Jaime. A life _here_.

She imagined their son, running barefoot along this beach, chasing Podrick, throwing sticks, skimming stones. She imagined him with golden skin like Jaime’s, kissed by the sun. With long, tangled golden curls. Waking up to this house every day, eating breakfast on the verandah, going to school somewhere in the city. He’d be fluent in two languages, most likely. Maybe more – Qarth was a real melting pot, not like narrow-minded racist Winterfell, where they didn’t even trust other Westerosi if they weren’t northern.

What could she offer Dayne in Winterfell? No bedroom of his own, not even room for a cot while he was small. A life of pillar-to-post while she worked out how she was going to work and have someone be there while she did.

And Winterfell _was_ miserable. Cold. Grey. It would be a childhood of coats and boots and central heating. Of doing homework by that gas fire in the living room that should probably be condemned. Of having to be quiet and not play too loudly, so he didn’t anger Roose. A childhood where a stranger lived in their house.

Here, Dayne would be with his dad.

There was so much guilt in that thought, though. Brienne worked hard. Long hours, a demanding job. Why couldn’t she afford to house her son? Why couldn’t she afford to have even her tiny, terraced house to herself?

She knew the answer to that, though.

It was there in Sansa Stark’s full face of designer make-up. In her fur-trimmed coat, in her expressions of disdain whenever Brienne or another employee had to talk to her.

It had been different when her mother had run the centre. Catelyn Stark had been a tough cookie, but she had always been fair. Back then, there had been pay rises every year. A bonus system. Paid overtime. An end-of-year gift hamper. Six months of sick pay, too. All of that had ended when she’d died.

Sansa was a good businesswoman, there was no doubt about that. But she didn’t reward loyalty, and she treated employees like subjects. If she was honest, Brienne hadn’t really been happy at the shopping centre for a while.

She could earn more here, she thought. Qarth was packed with nightclubs, and nightclubs needed bouncers. Brienne had her license, though she’d not used it in many years. Female bouncers were in high demand, too, for patting down female guests. They earned good money.

It could work, she thought … it could work if she just let it.

They went back to the house. Dried Podrick, cooked some more food. Ate together and then spent some time flopped out on the bean bags in the living room, Jaime trying to feel the baby kicking. Brienne had only felt it herself this past week, so it was probably way too soon to be felt from the outside, but watching his face as he palpated her belly was the most beautiful thing.

They went to bed tired, but ended up making love again anyway. Brienne astride Jaime, moving on his cock in slow, delicious rises and falls. His hand roamed her skin, sliding through her sweat, igniting every one of her nerves until her body reached a peak of such intensity that it shocked her. Shook her to her core.

As she was coming down, Jaime came too, with a guttural cry of his own. He looked so beautiful caught in the tides of sexual ecstasy. Beautiful and vulnerable and open to her. Always hers, if she wanted him.

They fell asleep still wrapped in each other, sated and happy and madly in love.

Brienne woke before dawn; her bladder was annoyingly persistent these days. The house was quiet; even Podrick was fast asleep in his own room.

After she’d peed, Brienne walked through the rooms, trying to imagine what it would be like to live here. She peered into the nursery, picturing a bed in here, a child asleep in it. Pictured herself going in to check up on him, perhaps returning a cuddly toy or tucking him in. Soothing him after a nightmare, taking his temperature if he was ill.

She walked over to the little drawers. Touched the blankets folded on top, touched the muslins next to them. Touched the little outfits on the hangers, marvelling at the tiny feet. The tiny hat.

She pulled open the drawers, one at a time. There were little vests in there. Little shirts and sleepsuits too. A cot mobile, one that played music. A nursery thermometer. Jaime had bought a pack of nappies too, and some baby shampoo. A top and tail bowl. A little towel with a hood.

Then, in the bottom drawer, there was something else.

Brienne froze for a moment. Perhaps she was not meant to see this. It had been put away, wrapped up in bright red velvet cloth.

It was a violin.

An old one, by the look of it. She picked it up – it was so light! Almost weightless. It was strung, and its bow lay beside it. On its tailpiece, there was a carving of a woman in a gown.

“Ah, you’ve found Cersei,” said Jaime, from behind her.

Brienne jumped out of her skin and almost dropped the violin.

“Careful,” Jaime grinned. “I paid 4.7 million dragons for her.”

“Seriously?” Brienne gasped. “4.7 _million_?!”

He nodded. “She’s a Valyrian. From their doom period. The 102BC Cersei Valyrian, to give her her full name. She’s one of the top ten most valuable instruments in the world.”

“And you just have it here? In a drawer?!”

Jaime shrugged. “I should probably get her properly stored. Or sell her.”

“Yes!”

“She and I have been through a lot together, though. I couldn’t really bear to part with her, even though she hates me now.”

“She – she hates you?”

“I lost my hand, and she hates that. She never makes a beautiful sound for me now, and I’ve tried and tried and tried. All she does is scream at me.”

“You make it sound like she’s a person.”

“Instruments like her have a soul. A personality. She’s been played by some of the greatest violinists who’ve ever lived; all their genius is in her, in a way. Mine too. She’s … kind of bewitching,” he said with a rueful grin.

Brienne looked at the 102BC Cersei Valyrian, and … she could see it. Feel it. There was an energy about this thing, something wild and beautiful.

“I loved her,” Jaime said after a moment. “Far more than I loved my wife. But … Cersei was a capricious mistress. She wanted me … all of me. All of the time. She was an obsession really. A compulsion.”

“The violin was? This violin?”

“Yes. I can see that now – nothing compared to it, the sound she made when she was mine was like ... I was a superb violinist before her. But with her, I was a virtuoso. We belonged together, I felt like I was born with her in my hand. I thought I’d die holding her, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And then I nearly did.”

“In King’s Landing? The earthquake?”

Jaime nodded. “I was playing her onstage in the Baelor concert hall. A soundcheck before the concert that night.”

“Gods …”

“The whole place collapsed,” Jaime said. His voice was light, but his eyes were dark. Haunted. “I could see it happening, like … slow motion or something. All the columns, collapsing one by one, closer and closer.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Weirdly, I wasn’t that scared. Not for myself. I don’t think it even occurred to me until afterwards that I could have died. But … when all those bricks fell on me, all I could think about was protecting Cersei.”

“Really?”

“I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her get smashed to pieces before my eyes. Knowing I would never hear her again.” He stopped, shaking his head for a moment. “Instead, it was the other way around.”

“Oh, Jaime.”

“I know. It was madness. Stupidity. She – it – it’s a _thing_. My hand … and nine members of the orchestra and Josmyn Peckledon, my assistant … dead.”

His face had deep lines, Brienne noticed. He looked like a different man, a man full of grief and bitterness. Not at all the Jaime she knew.

“All dead because of me, because of my concert, my skills.”

“No …”

“I know. But … for a long time, I thought they – the people who died – I thought I owed it to them to get back on the horse, to retrain, to learn to play as I once had, give their deaths meaning somehow. But … it’s impossible.”

“Are you sure?”

Jaime nodded. “I tried for three years. Everything. Every prosthetic hand, every adapted bow. I can play well enough but … I don’t sound like me. And Cersei just … she screams in my hand now. Like she doesn’t want to be there.”

“I’m so sorry, that sounds so hard.”

“Yeah. Well … that part of my life is over, I had to accept that. I have accepted that. I came out here, lost myself for a while, became someone else, and … that made me realise that I’d lived a very narrow life. Music first, music only. There are so many lives out there waiting to be lived, and I could have any one of them.”

He had a soft smile on his face, now.

“And then … one day I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker.”

Brienne smiled, too. Held out a hand to him and he came and took it, his eyes on her and not on his violin.

“Now … I’m going to be a dad. And it seems … kind of right? I couldn’t have done this if I was still so obsessed with music, still the man I was. I would have been a terrible father – selfish, self-obsessed. Absent all the time. Now, because I lost my hand, I can be the dad that Dayne needs me to be.”

“Oh, Jaime …”

“I know it’s shitty, but it’s allowed me to let it go. I might not be The Divine Lannister any more, but I can be Dayne O’Tarth’s dad. A good dad. That’s what I want to be.”

“I know,” Brienne said. Carefully, she put the 102BC Cersei Valyrian back in the drawer. Covered it back up in the folds of crimson velvet. She stood up and took Jaime in her arms.

They held each other for the longest while, rocking side to side as they did, for comfort.

“What are you doing awake?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

“Oh, my bladder’s the size of a marble,” she complained. “And then … well, I got to walking around. Thinking about things.”

“Things?”

Brienne shrugged. “I want to do this.”

“What?”

“This. Us. You’re right, I’m scared. Terrified of being hurt, terrified of the humiliation. But … that’s on Ronnet, not you. I shouldn’t be –”

“I understand.”

“No. You’re right about a lot of things. We’re madly in love, aren’t we? This is it – the real thing.”

Jaime laughed. “I think it is.”

“I want to be happy. I do.” She took a deep breath. “So … let’s try it. Let’s work out how it’s going to work … and let’s be together. The three of us … and Podrick, of course. Here.”

“You – you mean it?”

Brienne nodded. “I do. It might take a few months to wrap everything up in Winterfell, but … I really want this. This is how it should be for Dayne.”

Jaime looked as though he was about to speak again, but instead grabbed her face between his stump and his hand. Kissed her, hard.

Brienne kissed him back.

He shut the violin drawer with his foot and led her back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks as always for the excellent service of CaptainTarthister, who as always, helped me work out the kinks.
> 
> I'm currently alternating between chapters of this and chapters of Us Without Each Other, so if you'd like to be kept up to date and see teasers etc of either story, then please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	4. The Goddess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is nine months pregnant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter are for reasonably graphic childbirth, and poking fun at hippie culture. It's light-hearted though.
> 
> A note about Jaime's hair, since it seems to be an ongoing cause for concern. I am aware that a white person having locs is cultural appropriation. I've used it here as a character note to show the kind of background Jaime is from - someone wealthy and privileged trying to run away from his former life and having been too sheltered to understand the connotations of the symbols he adopts. 
> 
> I'm not advocating locs for white people, nor would I wear them myself. I do think I'm allowed to write about a character that would, though, and I won't be changing my mind on that. If you have a problem with it, then best not read any further. Thank you!

“Is this it?” Jaime asked.

“I don’t know,” Brienne said through gritted teeth. “It might just be the pizza we had last night.”

Jaime looked sceptical.

Brienne grabbed a cushion. Gripped it until her knuckles went white.

“This has to be it,” Jaime said, looking at her hands.

“I don’t know,” Brienne said again. “Isn’t it supposed to feel like period pains? This is … this is more like indigestion.”

She slowly got to her feet off the sofa, her huge bump sticking out in front of her; she was just so massive now, in every direction. Her due date was ten days ago, but still, it really didn’t feel possible that she was about to become a mother. It felt like she’d be pregnant forever.

“Should I get the pool ready?” Jaime asked, looking over to his perfectly-stacked boxes of birthing pool, pump and hosepipe that he had ready for the big moment. “Should I call Mirri?”

Mirri Maz Duur was a contact of Jaime’s, a Lhazareen woman who had come to Qarth decades ago to find herself in the drug culture. She made her living as a traditional Lhazareen godswife – healing rituals, ancient potions and poultices, and as a doula for those who wanted something a little more unconventional than a hospital birth.

Jaime and Brienne had been to a lot of her antenatal classes, listened to a lot of her hypnobirthing podcasts. It was all a bit woo for Brienne for the most part, but she liked the idea of doing it their way, of bringing Dayne into the world in their own home, of doing it all at her own pace and in her own way. It all sounded so lovely and peaceful. Mirri had promised to be as hands off as was safe – it sounded far less intimidating than being in a hospital with men she didn’t know peering and poking at her body from every angle.

“It seems a bit soon yet. I’m really not sure what’s happening. And … it’s only eight in the morning. Maybe I should take some Pepto-Bismol first. See if I need to go to the toilet?”

Besides, the pain had gone now, almost completely.

“How about some breakfast?” she suggested instead.

Jaime nodded. “All right. Yeah – probably you shouldn’t deliver a baby on an empty stomach.”

“Oh, it’s nothing so exciting, I’m sure. Mirri is probably just going to laugh at me for mistaking constipation for contractions.”

Jaime grinned, but his eyes looked nervous.

Brienne picked up her phone and lumbered vaguely in the direction of the bathroom. “Maybe I should see if I am constipated.”

“Have fun,” Jaime grimaced. “I’ll make some breakfast, and … we’ll see how things go.”

He watched after her with worried eyes, but Brienne made it into the bathroom without further incident, and sat down on the toilet with her phone. Intending to play some games for a while and see what happened. If there were any more pains.

But of course, there were three messages from Roose fucking Bolton, all of which were asking her to call him. The heating in her house in Winterfell wasn’t working well, and despite calling out and paying for a succession of plumbers, a few days after they’d left, the problem would come back. After four such incidents, Roose was angling for a reduction in his rent.

She deleted the messages before Jaime saw them – he was already mad as all the hells that Roose was harassing her so late into her pregnancy. He kept offering to splash out and get her house’s central heating system replaced entirely, just to shut her lodger up.

It was ridiculously generous of Jaime of course, but … she couldn’t keep getting him to bankroll her. It was quite enough that he’d built this house, bought all the furniture, that he’d supported her entirely since she’d moved to Qarth to be with him.

Then again, her mind kept wandering to that violin, sitting abandoned in the bottom drawer in what would one day be Dayne’s room.

_Four-point-seven million dragons_.

And it was just in a drawer. Just how much money did Jaime have, anyway?

She still hadn’t liked to ask that question outright. But if he was the best-selling classical artist of all time, if he still had dozens of albums selling even now…

If he could leave a four-point-seven-million-dragon violin forgotten in a drawer …

Just then, her phone rang in her hands, making her jump out of her skin. Of course, it was Roose. She answered with a sigh.

“Is everything all right, Roose?”

“You haven’t called me back.”

“I was just about to,” Brienne lied.

“I called you three times yesterday.”

“I was out. I had to put my phone on silent. I didn’t get back until late.”

“More like you were holed up in your bedroom with the Golden Wonder.”

Brienne grimaced. Partly, Roose was right. After yesterday’s visit to the godswife, after the incense had been waved over her belly and the chanting had been done, after Brienne had drunk the “Mother’s Power” potion that tasted suspiciously like supermarket own-brand raspberry leaf tea, she and Jaime had followed the woman’s advice to try and get things moving by having sex.

Another cramp twisted her guts then – maybe it had actually worked?

It still felt an awful lot like an upset stomach, though.

“What do you want, Roose?” she asked through gritted teeth. It came out more tetchy than she intended. “I already have someone else coming out to look at the boiler tomorrow.”

“I’ve been without heat for two weeks.”

“No, you’ve been without heat for four days over two weeks. I’ve had it fixed within a day every time.”

“And then it fails again. And I have to be here to wait for plumbers. That’s a considerable loss of earnings.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“I’ve had to cancel clients. Give them away to Walda.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Your apologies won’t pay my bills, Brienne. Or have you forgotten what that’s like?”

“Of course I haven’t!”

“Then how are you going to compensate me?”

She sighed, gripping the edge of the toilet seat with her free hand until the pain passed. “To be honest, Roose, I really don’t think I have to.”

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

“Things break sometimes. I’ve done my best to sort it out. It’s just one of those things.”

“One of those things? I could see my breath in the kitchen this morning. I had to boil a kettle to have a wash!”

“I know, it’s cold there.”

“It is! I guess you’ve forgotten that, too.”

“Of course I haven’t.”

“Well then do something about it.”

“I have been, Roose. Every time.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Okay,” she snapped. “What do you want me to do? Should I get the boiler replaced? Why don’t we just cut to the chase and do that? It’s obviously on the way out anyway.”

“That’s at least another day off work. More if you want to shop around, get quotes.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I lose two hundred dragons every time I need to take a day off.”

“Two _hundred_!?”

“Skin art is very lucrative, Brienne. True artists are well compensated.”

“Why do you drive such an old van, then? Why were you renting a room off me? At two hundred dragons a day, you could buy and sell my shitty place, surely?”

“I have a lot of child maintenance to pay.”

“Child maintenance?!” Brienne had met Roose’s son; he was in his early twenties at least.

“Back payments.”

“That’s … that’s really not my fault, is it?”

“I’ve lost earnings because of something that is your fault, though. Four days’ worth – that’s eight hundred dragons.”

“That’s exactly your rent!”

“It is.”

“What … you don’t want to pay me a month’s rent because of four days where the heating didn’t work?”

Roose scoffed. “Don’t tell me you can’t afford it, Brienne. I’ve seen your Facebook. Your fabulous beach house. Your vintage camper van.”

“They’re – they’re not mine! You know that! It’s all Jaime’s!”

“Looks like you’re living there to me.”

“Well, yes, but –”

“Then what do you need my rent money for?”

“I still have a mortgage to pay!”

“Don’t be stupid. Prettyboy could pay that off with his pocket change tomorrow.”

“That’s my house, not Jaime’s. And _you’re_ living there.”

“That doesn’t change –”

“Look, Roose. You’re my lodger, and right now you’ve got the entire place to yourself, but you’re only paying for a room. So I don’t think you have too bad a deal.”

“Only because you’ve been too lazy to find another tenant.”

“Lazy? Lazy?!” She took a breath – this really wasn’t conducive to her stress levels at this point of her pregnancy. “You know what? I’m not talking about this any more. It’s first thing in the morning here, I’m nine months pregnant, and I’m just not in the mood.”

“Well, that’s _great_. Thanks so much, Brienne.”

“The plumber will be there tomorrow. I’ll get him to give me a quote for a new boiler because this one really is on the way out.”

“But that means –“

“It means you’ll have to find a way to do it, or you’ll have to move out.”

“It didn’t take you long to forget what it’s like to be on the breadline, did it?”

“I’m hanging up now.”

She clicked the big red button with relish. Swore a very unladylike swearword.

Admitting defeat on the constipation front, she got up from the toilet. She really didn’t need to shit. Perhaps these were contractions after all.

Back in the kitchen, Jaime had made her a big plate of scrambled eggs, or the closest he could manage with one hand. He couldn’t stir that well with only his left hand and no right to steady the pan, so the eggs always looked more shredded than scrambled. They tasted good, though.

“Any more pains?” he asked as he passed her some cutlery.

“Maybe,” she said, heaving herself up onto one of the stools with very little grace. “I’m really not sure.”

Jaime chewed his lip. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call Mirri?”

“It seems a little soon. I’ve had what … fewer than a dozen cramps? They don’t feel like period pains, and they don’t take my breath away. If this is it, it’s probably really early stages. Niggles like this go on for days with a first baby.”

Jaime looked thoughtful as he chewed his toast. A smile teasing the corner of his lips. “Can you imagine, though? Next time we eat breakfast, Dayne could be with us.”

“Gods!”

“It still doesn’t feel real, does it?”

“Not at all.”

Just then, Brienne’s belly decided to grumble again, tensing to rock-hardness and twisting painfully.

“Another one?” Jaime asked.

She nodded. “Not too bad.”

“Maybe we should be timing them. Just in case.”

“Oh. Yes. Where’s my phone?”

It was, of course, right next to her – she fumbled with the lockscreen and found the contraction timer app she’d installed a few weeks ago.

“Does it hurt?” Jaime asked as he watched her. She was gripping the edge of the breakfast bar now. “Badly?”

“It’s not horrendous. As I said, it’s like having an upset stomach. I’m not convinced it’s _not_ an upset stomach!”

Mirri Maz Duur had told her what to expect during labour, and none of it was like this.

There had been a lot of stuff about stepping into her power, about her vagina opening like a flower and how she would find the strength of her inner tree goddess to bring her baby into the world. There had been nothing about feeling like you needed to shit.

On the contrary, Mirri had told Brienne confidently that she would “just know” when a contraction was a contraction.

Well, she didn’t. That promised reconnection with her womanhood really didn’t seem to be happening. How typical.

Once the pain had passed, Brienne shovelled the rest of her scrambled eggs down and drank the orange juice Jaime poured her without taking his eyes off her once.

Podrick came wandering in then, his face wet from his water bowl. He whined at the door to be let out, and Brienne slid inelegantly off her stool to throw open the doors for him.

“Are you ready to be a big brother, Pod? ” Jaime asked with a grin. He was loading the dishwasher now, still keeping half an eye on Brienne as he did.

Brienne laughed. “Don’t think there’ll be much of a family resemblance there.”

“Gods, I hope not!”

Brienne watched Pod run off into the little copse of trees behind the house where he went to do his doggy business.

“We should walk him,” she said. “If this is the beginnings of you-know-what, then we might not get another chance.”

“Are you sure you can?”

“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “Mirri said to keep mobile, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“We won’t go too far. Maybe to the jetty and back? You could drag me home from there if you needed to.”

“Podrick could!”

Brienne laughed again. She slipped her feet into the pair of Jaime’s Crocs that she’d adopted. Jaime went barefoot.

It was still early, so the sand was still cool and the morning sun still hadn’t got to baking the stones just yet.

Podrick, excitable as ever, went for a swim in the surf and then ran in mad circles around them, covering at least three times the distance they did just from his dashing about.

He was particularly attentive to Brienne, she noticed. Like he knew something was happening.

“Could I borrow some money?” she blurted to Jaime as they lost sight of the house.

“Of course,” Jaime replied. “But… we’re together, right? So it’s not ‘borrow’. My money is yours.”

Brienne nodded. It was difficult to understand that, particularly with the sums involved. Again, her thoughts went to the 102BC Cersei Valyrian sitting in the drawer. To the four-point-seven million dragons Jaime had paid for it.

“I think the boiler is going to need replacing. In my house. In Winterfell.”

“Roose been bellyaching again?”

She sighed. “Am I being unkind?”

“To Roose? Probably not unkind enough.”

Brienne made a face. “He reckons he’s missed four days of work because of waiting for a plumber. That it’s cost him eight hundred dragons.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah. He thinks I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be on the breadline. That I should let him off his rent this month because I can afford to.”

“What?!”

“He says he won’t be able to pay his child maintenance if I don’t.”

“Child maintenance? Isn’t his kid an adult?”

“Back payments, apparently.”

“Brienne, he’s taking the piss.”

“I know that.”

Jaime sighed. “It’s like this, a bit, when you’ve got money. People resent it. They get weird.”

“Like I did, you mean?”

“Well, yeah. Though you had the right reasons. But … it’s always a stumbling block. Always an issue. You can never do the right thing. I don’t mean that to sound poor-me, but it’s hard to know how to handle it. When you have enough money to solve the problems of everyone you know, you either come across as indifferent or interfering. Some people are terrified of taking advantage, and others will take and take and take if you let them.”

“Like Roose.”

He nodded. “Roose has got a whole house for the price of a room. He can’t have it both ways – he’s your lodger, not your brother or your friend or your boyfriend. No matter what you do, it would never be enough for someone like him, not if you bought him a house and gave him enough money that he didn’t have to work again. He’d still be moaning.”

“That’s true.”

“Most of the time, you don’t even like him.”

Brienne chewed her lip. “He’s a bit weird.”

“And look – you’re about to have a baby. Maybe even today. This really isn’t the time to be thinking about _that_ prick.”

As if on cue, Brienne’s belly twisted again, hard enough to make her grimace. Jaime wrapped an arm around her. Rubbed her back until it passed.

“We should get back,” he said. “I can throw sticks for Pod later if he gets antsy.”

Brienne nodded. That one _had_ been strong enough to take her breath away.

The next one did, too, and it came less than five minutes later, as they headed back through the tidebreaker towards the house. This time, she gripped Jaime’s hand and groaned.

“Mirri said walking would speed things up,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, this _is_ speeding up.”

The next one hit as she got onto the verandah, and this time she had to get on her knees until it passed. Rocked herself back and forth as Jaime fumbled with the keys, tripped over the doorstep and got himself wound up in Podrick’s lead.

“We need to get the pool set up,” he told her in a panic. “This is happening, isn’t it? It really is.”

“Yes,” she managed. “I think it is.”

Mirri had promised her that warm pool water would make the pain more bearable, that it would make her feel calm and in control.

Brienne got back to her feet and managed to get into the house. She did not feel calm or in control right now. She felt terrified, if she was honest – terrified she couldn’t cope with this, terrified she had made the wrong decision to have a home birth with no pain relief and only a godswife in attendance. It had all seemed so serene and natural at the time, a wonderful way to welcome a new life into the world. Now, she had to admit, it felt slightly like madness.

She went into the bedroom to put her bikini on and ended up clinging to a bedpost. Podrick whined worriedly at her, running between her and Jaime as if imploring Jaime to help her.

Jaime was busy doing just that, though. She could hear the sound of the pump as he inflated the pool.

She grabbed her phone, dismissing the notifications of yet more messages and missed calls from Roose, and dialled Mirri’s number.

“Brienne!” cried Mirri’s very cheery, heavily Lhazareen-accented voice on the other end. “Is something happening?”

“Yes!” Brienne panted as her whole belly seized tight. “Definitely!”

“Didn’t I tell you yesterday you looked ready to go?”

“I – I fucked Jaime. Like you said.”

Mirri laughed at her profanity. “That always works.”

“It hurts …”

“Oh, poor girl, are you struggling?”

“I - I don’t think I can do this.”

“You can, of course you can! You’re a beautiful, strong flower. A tall one – a sunflower! Right now, your petals are opening up to look at the sun. Visualise it. Feel the warmth of it inside you – it’s good, and it’s strong, and so are you.”

“I –”

“Breathe, Brienne. All I hear is anxiety. Negativity. This is a positive, affirming experience. This is womanhood in its greatest glory!”

“I’ll try.”

“Keep mobile. Use the pool. I’ll be there very soon.”

Mirri hung up, and Brienne dissolved into another wave of searing pain. Desperately, she tried to remember the dozens of classes she’d been to, the breathing she was meant to do, the visualisation, the self-hypnosis that would bring her into her power as a strong, powerful mother tree giving life to her acorn or some other bullshit.

Her phone rang. She grabbed it.

“Mirri, I don’t think I can – “

“It’s me. Roose.”

Brienne groaned, a noise that was only half caused by the contraction.

“Charming. I’ve been thinking.”

“Roose, I’m – “

He cut her off. “No. I have a big job on tomorrow. I can’t be home. I’m not rescheduling it because I might lose the client.”

“Whatever. Roose, I –“

“I haven’t finished. Call your plumber. Tell him to call you when he’s coming, and you can call me. I’ll send Walda or Locke. “

“What?”

“I’ll delegate your problem to one of my staff. But you’re paying them.”

“I’m not!”

“Well, then I can’t be there.”

“Roose, seriously. Now is not the time. I’m – “

“You’re what? Polishing the silverware? Chatting with your butler? Braiding your boyfriend’s ridiculous hair?”

“Oh, fuck off!”

“Seriously, Brienne. You’ve really changed. You –”

Brienne hung up. That would teach her to look at her phone before she answered it.

He called again, almost immediately. She declined the call. He tried again.

Jaime came in, still jittery as all the hells. “Pool’s up,” he said. “It’s just filling now.”

“Mirri is on her way,” she told him. Putting her phone on silent. “Hopefully soon.”

“Good. Are – are you okay?”

“No…”

“Oh, Brienne!” He looked jittery and scared, but he got down beside her and put his arms around her. Rubbed her back with the heel of his hand.

“It really hurts.”

“We need to get you in that pool.”

Never mind the bikini. Brienne took off the harem pants of Jaime’s that she’d been living in for the past few weeks and clambered into the still-filling pool with just a t-shirt on.

The water didn’t help the pain exactly, but it felt nice, and it helped her to relax and get on top of just how much it really, really fucking hurt.

Jaime finished the filling and then got in the pool too, naked of course. He sat behind her and gently stroked her face as she tried to relax. She tried to visualise herself opening like a flower, tried doing the chakra breathing, tried communing with the body of her inner mother goddess.

It was all bullshit.

The pain radiated up her back with every contraction, gripping the entire lower half of her body in white-hot fire. She didn’t feel like a flower, or a tree, or a mother goddess at all. Mostly, she felt like she was going to shit herself.

The contractions were coming thick and fast by the time Mirri arrived, and nothing Brienne did seemed to be helping much. Jaime rubbed her back as best he could with his single hand, whispered soft and soothing words to her. Let her grip his hand or dig her nails into his leg. Podrick paced the floor, whining and stressed.

“Oh, my gods!” Mirri exclaimed as she walked through the kitchen and into the living room to find them all in the pool. “Look at you, mama tree.”

Brienne had an uncharitable urge to swear at the poor woman for fucking lying to her that she could do this without drugs. The way she had described her own birth experiences had sounded so tranquil, so lovely, so unmedicalised.

Mirri had _really_ glossed over the pain, though. She’d mentioned it as something that only happened if you were stressed or being pressured by doctors. Something you could easily overcome in your own home with a bit of meditation or breathing.

“I – I can’t do this,” Brienne moaned after that contraction had faded.

“Mama tree, you _are_ doing it,” Mirri said with a tilt of her head. “You’re _so_ nearly there.”

She walked around the room, drawing blinds and laying towels down.

“You’re doing really well,” Jaime said. He kissed the wet shoulder of her t-shirt.

They were both liars. The whole thing had gone teats-up from the very beginning. “I can’t do days of this,” she cried.

“Days?” asked Mirri with a tinkly laugh. “I don’t think you’ll be another hour!”

“Really?”

“Yes! This is transition, Brienne, it’s the hardest part. Be strong – you’re getting ready to meet Dayne very soon.”

Brienne didn’t know whether she was relieved or terrified.

Jaime was most definitely excited, though. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard. “Nearly there,” he whispered.

“Now,” Mirri continued. “Let’s get ready to welcome your little acorn into the world.”

She set to work lighting candles and incense around the room, placing little statues of that Summer Isles fertility goddess with all the breasts, telling Brienne to focus on them.

The sentiment was lost on Brienne – she was on all fours now, her head buried in Jaime’s chest, trying to concentrate on not shitting herself every time she had another contraction. Oh, gods, this was horrendous. She would never, ever do this again. Why the fuck hadn’t they used a fucking condom?

Mirri was chanting now, trying to raise her voice over the sound of Brienne’s groaning, trying to get Jaime to join in and turn this into an uplifting, joyous experience somehow. Even Jaime looked a bit uncertain, though. He looked quite worried.

The next contraction brought the searing urge to push – all-consuming and utterly irresistible. All the hypnobirthing classes Brienne had been to had taught her that all that pushing was unnecessary, that she could simply breathe the baby out and avoid all the trauma and the exhaustion.

That was also bullshit, she realised. The breathing was useless; her body was pushing all by itself and she was just along for the ride.

Mirri tried getting her to change position, to open up parts of her that had elaborate names Brienne had forgotten what meant. They all hurt. Squatting was insanely painful, kneeling much the same. Lying on her side felt like she was going to slip into the water and drown herself under her own giant weight.

Only being on all fours gave her any measure of control over the surging pressure. Jaime’s arms around her, his voice in her ear and the strength of him as she clung to his shoulders were the only comfort she had in this world. Again and again he told her she was beautiful and strong and that she could do this.

He was such a fucking liar.

All there was was the pain, all there was was that all-consuming need to push as hard as she could.

There was a horrible part then, where the pain was so acute and so intense that she thought her body was literally tearing in two. Podrick howled right along with her, Mirri’s chanting rose to fever pitch, and Brienne bit down on Jaime’s shoulder so hard she tasted his blood. The smell of incense seemed to smother her in her tiny world of agony.

Then, in a sudden rush, it was all over. Mirri leapt forward and caught the baby as he slithered from Brienne’s body, Podrick barked joyously, and Brienne collapsed against Jaime, exhausted and bewildered and not really believing it was over. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her over and over.

“Oh my goodness,” Mirri was saying. “Look at this, look at this …”

Brienne looked at the baby – he was curled up tight, perfectly blissful and perfect … and still in his sac.

“My water didn’t break?” she managed from her raw throat.

“He’ll be a warlock!” Mirri said. “Babies born in the caul are said to be gifted with magic powers.”

Brienne laughed.

“It’s _very_ rare,” Mirri said, almost scolding Brienne for her mirth. “Especially when the baby is late.”

“Look at him ...” Jaime gasped. “He’s so peaceful. He doesn’t even know he’s been born.”

Brienne wished she could say the same for herself – everything below her waist felt absolutely _destroyed_. The pool was dark with blood and the gods knew what else.

Mirri did some more chanting, then cut the sac open to pull it off. She passed the wriggling, slippery form of Dayne to Brienne. Her child. Her baby. She’d done it – he was really here.

He cried a little, opening his eyes to look at both his parents.

“Gods, look at him!” Jaime whispered. “I can’t believe that’s really him.”

Podrick nosed over to sniff the baby and lick Brienne’s cheek, too. Every inch the proud big brother.

The next hour passed in a blur – somehow they managed to deliver the placenta and cut the cord once it had stopped pulsing. Mirri weighed Dayne and helped Brienne to latch him to her breast. Checked her and stitched her. Jaime made food for everyone, still looking regretfully at the placenta that was bundled up for disposal. They’d had an uncharacteristically intense argument about keeping it and cooking it, and Mirri had lectured Brienne about its healing properties after birth, but she wanted no part of it. So instead, Jaime served some more eggs, walking about the house naked as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Her belly full, Brienne limped to the shower, marvelling that her legs still worked at all. Jaime joined her, and they held each other beneath the running water.

But Dayne … Dayne. Everything was Dayne.

She and Jaime were besotted with him already. Like they couldn’t believe he was real, like they couldn’t believe he was theirs. He was a big baby – a little over 9lbs and he had big, curious blue eyes like Brienne’s, and Jaime’s nose. They kept staring at him, noticing new cute things about him like his tiny fingernails. The way his hair curled as it dried.

Mirri made them what she floridly called a family nest in the bedroom, though it looked a lot like a pile of pillows covered with a paisley sheet on their bed and a fuckton more incense to Brienne. Jaime helped the godswife to clean up and then joined his new family in the nest, snuggling in beside Brienne to watch Dayne feed. Stroking his little cheek. Kissing Brienne. Telling her how amazing she was and how much he loved them both.

Pod curled up at the end of the bed, one of his huge paws on Brienne’s leg for security. He’d been worried about her, she could tell.

The godswife had a blessing ritual that involved a lot of leaping about and waving bells and banging drums. Brienne wanted to laugh, but all this meant a lot to Jaime, so she smiled politely through it all while just wanting to rest. Wanting to gaze at the beautiful child that she and Jaime had made while drunk and stupid on the beach.

Mirri left them after that, making them promise they would give themselves what she called a babymoon – time to bond with Dayne, time to get used to life as a family, without a lot of visitors.

They didn’t have to worry about that – all their family was in Westeros and neither of them was blessed with an abundance of friends. The only nuisance on the horizon was Roose, who had managed to leave Brienne six increasingly irate messages and twelve missed calls while she’d been busy bringing her son into the world.

She deleted them all. Blocked his number, at least for a week. She wanted her babymoon, fuck everything else.

This was what mattered. Jaime with his arm around her, their son in her arms. This was what she cared about – this was what was hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to CaptainTarthister for reading and working out the kinks! 
> 
> Thanks too to all of you for your kudos and comments on this story, it's been a blast. I have one more part to go - I'll be starting on the first chapter of Lions of the Rock in two weeks' time, where we'll be catching up with Jaime, Brienne, Podrick and Dayne a few years down the line.
> 
> If you'd like updates and teasers as they happen, then please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much to the wonderful CaptainTarthister for discussing and reading it all through when I was stuck and needed help. And the amazing Dialects_and_Costumes (unadulteratedkr) for her fabulous insight into singing and music.


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